


that tender light

by mayfriend



Series: she walks in beauty [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Book 2: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, F/M, Female Harry Potter, Gen, Genderbending, Genderswap, Girl-Who-Lived, Power Imbalance, Soul Bond, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-07 18:45:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 50,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12847242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayfriend/pseuds/mayfriend
Summary: Harry’s dreams that night were frenzied, disjointed, terrifying. There was blood on the walls, blood on her hands, an animal lying prone at her feet. She was laughing. She was laughing, high and cruel. A flash of green light. A scream. Blood on the floor, not water. Blood going up her arms, as if she’s stuck her arms deep in a bath of it, and a voice -thevoice in the walls -I smell blood,it chorused in a thousand languages, I smell BLOOD!She tried to run away, but only seemed to get closer to the crime scene with every turn. Moaning Myrtle was a girl, a real girl, but then she was on the floor, glassy eyed and empty, and always afraid, always hiding.I will return for you, Harriet Potter…promised the monster, and Harry believed him.Second year of my Soulmate AU, wherein Harriet Potter's hopes for a nice, quiet year are thwarted by a singularly determined house elf, two bickering best friends, and a strange boy in a fifty year old diary.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I shot myself in the foot here, lads. I told myself I'd be doing a year per work, each work being a one shot. It was going well with first year, which I managed in 4,000 words. 
> 
> How did I do that? I can't remember. 
> 
> I'm now over 30,000 words and I'm not even done with second year, so I decided it's better to cut my losses and post this as a two or three chapter work, depending on how I split things up. And twenty thousand of those words were AFTER I cut the polyjuice plot and decided just to let Harry rely on plain old detective work instead. 
> 
> I've been rather neglecting my other stories, so I apologise for that, but this did just... kinda consume me. So, I hope you like what I've got so far - please let me know, and if you have any suggestions for the rest of the year, I'm very open to them! (Because... diary!Tom Riddle is proving to be a tricky fucker.)
> 
> Also, PSA, I nicked some of Rowling's dialogue with minimal changes because I cannot write an entire bloody quidditch match. Or a dueling club. Or anything. I can't write anything. Kill me now. But yeah, if you even mildly recognise it, I nicked it.

For all that Harry’s eleventh birthday had turned out to be an unlikely success, her twelfth birthday showed no signs of having the same miraculous turn of fortune. The Dursleys were entertaining guests - Vernon’s job was to tell his Japanese golfer joke without ruining the punchline, Petunia played the part of the perfect housewife bringing out delights that Harry had created, and Dudley was, to her best guess, impersonating a severely overweight penguin in his suit. Harry’s job was, as always, to stay out of sight and pretend she didn’t exist.

She couldn’t say she exactly minded the arrangement - she had no taste for small talk, and no desire to talk to Vernon’s boss. But she did want human contact with someone other than her family (and she used that term in the very loosest definition) - the summer weeks had stretched long, unbearably so, and not a single letter had come from Harry’s friends in all that time. Hedwig was locked in her cage, denied the freedom to fly, and all of Harry’s things - including her wand - had been locked under the stairs. Odd, she thought, how a year ago she had desperately wanted to escape the understairs cupboard, and now she wanted to break in.

But Harry is a good girl. She knows how to wait. She just never found it this hard before; now she has a place to go in her mind that was so much better, so much more wonderful than Little Whinging. The distractions that had always worked before - digging up the garden, fertilizing the rose bushes, pulling weeds, mowing the grass, cooking the meals, cleaning the bathrooms - couldn’t occupy her mind enough. She wanted the roast dinners to cook themselves, the roses to start talking, the mirror to start criticising her hair. She couldn’t even daydream about her soulmate anymore. But she said none of that, because that was freakish, and in Privet Drive, Harry was a good, quiet girl. Even Uncle Vernon didn’t have the heart to smack her about when she was obedient and silent, like a ghost.

So when a large eyed, pointy eared, grey-green skinned creature dressed in a pillow case appeared on her bed, she honestly thought it was her own imagination finding an outlet at last. She quickly throws that notion away, when it cries in a high pitched, but incredible _real_ voice “Miss Harriet Potter, ma’am!”

Harry barely managed to hold back a scream. She was sure her eyes were as round as bowling balls. The only thing that stopped her crying out was the knowledge of what the Dursleys would do if she made her presence known to the Masons. Through the ajar door, Harry heard Dudley’s simpering voice: “May I take your coats, Mr and Mrs Mason?”

Not taking her eyes off the- off the _thing,_ Harry walked swiftly to the door and closed it, muffling noise from without, and hopefully within as well. That done, she hesitantly walked over to the bed. For all that the creature was about two foot high, she knew that magic was a great equaliser and this thing could be far more dangerous than it appeared. Flitwick, possibly the shortest person she’d ever met, was a champion duellist, for crying out loud! She was a Gryffindor, yes, but she wasn’t _stupid_.

“How do you know my name?” She finally asked, after spending a solid ten seconds edging towards the bed without actually daring to sit back down, wishing desperately she had her wand with her.

“Oh, Harriet Potter miss!” The creature cried in a high pitched voice that Harry felt sure would be heard by the Dursleys, even with the door closed, sliding off the bed to give Harry a deep bow, “Dobby has known your name since you were a baby, miss! Dobby has wanted to meet you for so long! The honour… the honour is too much for Dobby…” Absentmindedly, Dobby - that had to be it’s name - began pulling at his ears.

“Right,” Harry said in a tight voice, before forcing herself to breathe. “Th-thanks, Dobby.” If he wanted to hurt her, he could have, she reasoned. And with this thought in mind - and a smaller, shriller voice inside her mind telling her she was an idiot - she walked two paces and sat down on the bed, looking at the tiny thing before her. She wanted to ask _what are you?_ but she knew that would be very rude, so settled on: “Who are you?”

“Dobby, miss. Just Dobby. Dobby the house-elf.”

House-elf. Harry filed that piece of information away - she couldn’t remember reading about house elves as dangerous creatures in her Defence textbook, or at all, but that didn’t mean she could relax. She conjures up a smile, remembering how Aunt Petunia coached her on how to talk to people, how not to embarrass her family. As if summoned by the thought of her, Harry heard her aunt’s high, false laugh through the floorboards. “It’s very nice to meet you,” she says to Dobby.

His reaction to what Harry considered a fairly neutral statement was unexpected. The little elf’s golf ball eyes filled with tears, his ears drooping. “Miss Harriet Potter… is pleased to meet Dobby…” He sniffed loudly, and Harry’s eyes widened with horror at the realisation that he was crying.

“Oh, no,” she said, getting off the bed to crouch down to Dobby’s level, hands fluttering about his tiny form as she panicked about what to do, “please, please Dobby, don’t cry. I’m sorry-”

“Miss Harriet Potter is _sorry-”_ Dobby wailed, before turning around to face Harry’s desk and thumping his head against the drawers, making a loud noise with his apparently incredibly durable skull.

Without thinking, Harry reached out and grabbed Dobby by his tiny shoulders, and pulled him to her chest, too afraid to even breathe as she waited in the sudden silence for footsteps on the stairs. But there was just the light clinking of cutlery, and muffled conversation. Dobby fell silent immediately once she’d touched him. When she was satisfied that nobody had heard Dobby’s violent attack of her furniture, Harry let out a breath and released the house-elf, before dropping onto her knees.

“I need you to be quiet,” she explained hurriedly, “otherwise my uncle will _kill_ me. Please, Dobby, just say whatever you need to, but be _quiet_ as you do it.”

She released him, and Dobby shuffled closer to her. “Dobby…” he said in his small voice, “Dobby has never been _held_ before. Miss Harriet Potter has _touched_ Dobby-”

“I’ll hold you again if you’re quiet,” Harry blurted out. Tears slid out of Dobby’s eyes, and for one terrible moment Harry thought that he was going to headbutt something again, or start hiccoughing even louder than before, but he looked at her for a long moment, before nodding shallowly. Harry opened her arms, and in a flash Dobby was sitting on her lap, staring up at her face with adoration in his large round eyes. She could feel his racing heartbeat through her chest. Harry sighed in relief, and ran her hand down the back of Dobby’s bald, grey-green head without thinking. At the movement, Dobby shivered and cuddled closer to her. When she could be sure of her voice, Harry spoke. “Why is it you’re here, Dobby?”

Dobby squirmed, but didn’t make any move to leave Harry’s arms. “It is difficult, miss Harriet Potter,” he said in his strange voice, “Dobby does not quite know where to start…”

“How-” she wonders how to phrase her question, licking her lips, “how did you know where to find me?” She had thought that nobody could find her at the Dursley’s. But if Dobby could, that meant that _Voldemort_ might be able to, and she wasn’t quite ready to face her soulmate again. Perhaps she never would be, despite what she’d told him, or rather, his phantom.

“Dobby’s family,” Dobby said miserably, “they talked about Harriet Potter… about how she lived with muggles… Dobby just wanted to be where miss Harriet Potter was, and Dobby was…”

Maybe she had been right the first time, she thought with a gulp. Dobby was obviously incredibly powerful if he could just think of someone and find them. But he didn’t seem malicious to her, the opposite in fact. “Your family,” she asked, “did they send you here? Do they know you’re here?”

Dobby began to shake. “No, no,” he cried, too loud, much too loud, “Dobby is such a bad elf… Dobby will have to punish himself for this, has to shut his ears in the oven door for this, oh, if they ever knew-”

" _Quiet_ ,” Harry hissed in a panic, and Dobby let out a little sob before falling silent. She had a nasty feeling that if she didn’t have her arms around him, he might have tried to find an oven to shut his ears in right away. The buzz of conversation continued below them, undisturbed. “Dobby… your family… don’t they notice you hurting yourself?” Her stomach rolled as she tried to imagine what kind of people _wouldn’t_ notice their- their servant (Harry had no idea what exactly Dobby was to his ‘family’) banging his head against drawers and cooking his ears in ovens.

“Notice?” Dobby said bleakly, “Dobby is just a house-elf. His family do not notice Dobby. They let Dobby get on with it, miss. Sometimes they remind Dobby of his extra punishments. Oh, Dobby is a bad, bad house-elf-”

“Shh,” Harry hushes him, and stokes the smooth back of his head again, “You’re not a bad house-elf.”

It takes Dobby ten minutes, or thereabouts, to gather his composure to speak again after that, every time he tried before then ending with his voice breaking and him having to sob into Harry’s t-shirt to be quiet. Harry’s legs had started to go dead beneath her, but she didn’t dare let Dobby go, especially when he was in such a state.

“Dobby had heard of Harriet Potter miss’ greatness…” he finally manages to croak out, “but Dobby did not know… did not know of her goodness… her kindness to a wretch like Dobby…”

Pity had long ago replaced any fear or anger Harry felt toward the little elf. “Dobby… is there any way you can get away from your family? They don’t-” Harry had been about to say that they didn’t sound like good people, but she cut herself off, realising that Dobby may have to punish himself for her saying that. “Could you escape?” She finishes.

Dobby shakes his head resolutely, “Dobby is a house-elf, miss. House-elves must be freed by their families, and Dobby’s family will never, never set him free… Dobby will be theirs until he dies…”

Harry’s heart dropped. “Oh,” she manages, “that’s…”

Suddenly, her own confinement in Privet Drive for another measly four weeks seems like nothing at all. “Dobby,” she says, trying desperately not to let on in her voice how much the little elf’s story affected her, “if your family would punish you… punish you _more…_ why come here? Why risk it? You don’t even know me.”

“I had to warn the Great Harriet Potter,” Dobby muttered, rubbing at his orb-like eyes with his tiny, spindly hands. “She defeated the Dark Lord, twice, twice! She is kind and good and brilliant and-” Harry can feel her face heating up.

“Had to warn me about what?” Harry asks, uncomfortable with the unearned praise that Dobby was showering upon her. “Is it- is it Voldemort?”

Dobby squeaked in fear. _“Do not say the name!_ ”

“Okay,” she said in a soothing voice, “okay, I won’t. Is it do with- with you-know-who?”

Dobby’s eyes darted all over the room, anywhere but Harry’s face. “Not- not he-who-must-not-be-named, miss. Dobby cannot say,” he whispers, “Dobby must not say. But Harriet Potter must be told - must be warned - she must not go back to Hogwarts! There is a plot- a _terrible_ plot, Dobby has known for _months_ now-”

Harry’s mind short circuited. Not go back to Hogwarts? It was unthinkable. Hogwarts was the only home she’d ever known, the only place where she had friends and worth. She would rather die that not go back. The vehemence of her own thoughts surprised her, but she realised she meant them. After her soulmate swooping in to save her had turned out to be an impossible fantasy, Hogwarts was the only thing Harry was living for. She couldn’t go back in the cupboard, go back to being picked on at school, being lonely and ostracized and not eating her fill.

“Dobby,” she said, her voice almost breaking, “I- I have to go back. I have to learn how to do magic, I have to- you don’t understand, Dobby, it’s all I have. If… if you had a way to escape from your family, even if it was for part of the year, even if- even if you had to go back and face them afterwards… wouldn’t you?”

“Dobby could never, never leave-”

Harry bit back a curse. “Dobby, I’m telling you. I don’t belong here. Ibelong at Hogwarts. I belong in the magical world. I can’t stay here.”

“Harriet Potter cannot go back!” Dobby cries in his high, piping voice. Harry flinched, and he squirmed out of her arms (reluctantly) in favour of taking a handful of her cheeks in each of his tiny, surprisingly warm, hands and anchoring her face towards him. She tries to reflexively pull away and finds him much stronger than she thought. “Hogwarts is not safe for Harriet Potter! She is too good, too good and too great and too important to lose! There will be death, death in Hogwarts-”

“Death?” Harry says hoarsely, “How do you- your family, Dobby, who is your family?”

Dobby quivers, but holds firm - both with his gaze and his grip. “Dobby cannot say. All he can say - all he can say is there is a plot. A terrible plot, and Hogwarts is not safe for Harriet Potter-”

“Please,” Harry says desperately, “quieter-”

“Harriet Potter must promise,” Dobby says in his high pitched voice, “she must promise that she will not return!”

For a moment, Harry considers lying. Considers saying, _alright, alright, I won’t go back_. But she knows about magic now, knows that words have power, and she is afraid that making that promise actually will bar her from Hogwarts. And she won’t risk it. “This plot,” she says to Dobby, “is it just going after me? Or is everyone in danger?”

Dobby says nothing, his lip wobbling. “Dobby,” she says as firmly as she can whilst the creature has a handful of her cheeks in each hand, “is everyone in danger?”

Shaking, Dobby breaks eye contact. It’s enough of an answer for Harry. “Dobby, I have friends there, friends that I need to protect-”

“Friends who do not even write to Harriet Potter?” Dobby says suddenly, his face screwed up in what could be defiance.

“How do you-” Harry’s mouth goes dry. _"Y_ _ou?_ You took my letters?”

Dobby looks almost ashamed as he stares down at the carpet. “Dobby thought- Dobby thought if Harriet Potter didn’t think her friends wanted to see her… Dobby thought that Harriet Potter might not want to go back-”

Anger, hot and painful floods through her. “Listen to me, Dobby,” she said in a low voice, her hands curling into fists at her sides, _“Nothing_ could stop me going back to Hogwarts, do you understand? Even if I had no friends, even if I could die, nothing could stop me, because I belong at Hogwarts-”

“No!” Dobby cries, “No! No! Harriet Potter cannot, cannot go back!” and lets go of her numbed cheeks in less than a second. Harry winces at the sensation of blood flow being restored, and that second of hesitation costs her. Dobby throws himself bodily across the room, and starts thumping his head against the wall with incredible strength. It’s so loud, too loud, and all the gentle, dinner time noises from below stop. Plaster flies away in clouds of dust. Hedwig wakes up with a squawk of surprise at the disturbance.

“Dobby, _please!”_ she cries, rage turned to terror in an instant, and there’s footsteps thumping up the stairs, and her heart is beating against her ribcage so fast it feels like it might just break through, and the door is opening and Dobby is turning around with tears coursing down his cheeks and-

Uncle Vernon’s mean, beady eyes meet hers as Dobby disappears into thin air.

* * *

 

It takes Harry two and a half weeks to sneak out of Number Four. She had considered going out of the window that night, after the Masons had left and Vernon had kept her up half the night shouting at her and pulling out chunks of her hair, but the morning after Dobby’s visit, the first thing her uncle had done was attach cast iron bars to the window.

Harry wasn’t even allowed to go outside anymore - the gardening had been boring, and hard work, but Harry misses it now - she hadn’t felt the sun on her skin, the wind in her hair for too long. She closed into herself - Hedwig’s cage had been taken away, locked in Dudley’s room, and no matter how much she begged neither her aunt or uncle would let her have her back.

She cooks, she cleans, she curls up on her bed and cries. The days drag by slowly, so slowly, and she isn’t sure what she’ll do if she sees Dobby again - kiss him, because she is so fucking _lonely_ , or kill him for doing this to her. But Dobby doesn’t come. Not even Dudley taunts to her anymore, just hitting her with his Smeltings stick when she’s unlucky enough to cross his path. Petunia doesn’t even look at her. Vernon grunts. The silence is the worst part of it all. She is starving, but not for food.

Dudley is still in bed, Aunt Petunia has a migraine, and Vernon is watching a boxing match on the television, occasionally yelling at the screen. Harry has finished breakfast, and she doesn’t exactly plan to leave - she just sees an empty hallway, can hear Dudley’s snores and Vernon’s commentary, knows that Aunt Petunia will be laid up for the rest of the day in a darkened room. She unchains the door as quietly as she can, and silently opens the door. The air on her face, coming through the crack of the door, makes her feel brave. It’s the way she feels when she’s on a broom, high above the ground, invincible.

Harry is half a street away from Privet Drive before her brain engages. Now she’s out, what is she to do? Everyone round here knows her, has known her as the Dursley’s criminal niece since she was a toddler. She can’t stay here. She ends up wandering in the direction of town, before coming to the local library. The sign is peeling, the lawn covered in weeds, but it looks like the most wonderful building she’s ever seen when she realises exactly who she can turn to.

An hour and a half later, and having used the library’s free phone to call pretty much every dentist in North London listed in the yellow phone book - where Hermione had told her her parent’s practice was - a woman answers the phone cheerily. “Rise and Shine dental practice, Dr Granger speaking.”

“Dr Granger,” Harry says quickly, relief flooding through her, “I’m a friend of your daughter’s.”

* * *

 

Hermione and her parents arrive in Privet Drive the next day. Harry’s jail break had gone unnoticed - when she had slid, reluctantly, back into the house, Vernon had still been swearing at the television set, and although Dudley had woken up, he hadn’t yet ventured out of his room. When he finally did, she fried him up a full English breakfast with extra bacon, and he left his egg white which she picked up with her hands - it was lukewarm - and swallowed, almost crying at how good it tasted.

Harry knows they’ve arrived when she hears a male voice that isn’t Uncle Vernon’s, saying words like _report_ and _abuse_ and _inhumane._ A key twists in the lock, and Aunt Petunia stands to the side looking like she’d just taken a bite of a lemon as Hermione rushes in to tackle Harry. “Oh Harry,” her best friend had cried, looking around the Spartan room and Harry’s sickly pallor, “how could they do this to you?”

She honestly didn’t expect Uncle Vernon to let her leave with her things, with the exception of Hedwig who none of them wanted to look after - she had resigned herself to having to buy new robes, books, the lot in Diagon. Maybe get one of the teachers to retrieve her wand, if she was lucky. But she had underestimated just how intimidating the Drs Granger could look, particularly when they strongly implied they were very, _very_ well respected dentists, and they had the police commissioner as a patient, and they could make Uncle Vernon’s life very difficult. “I don’t think Grunnings would want the bad PR of one of their employees being a child abuser, do you dear?” Dr Granger said airly to her husband, her light brown eyes flashing dangerously. So, a miracle of dentistry and blackmail later, Harry climbed into the back of the Granger’s boxy car with her wand in hand, her trunk in the book, and Hedwig hooting excitedly on her lap.

“I can’t thank you enough,” she said, over and over again. When Hermione presented her with a tuna mayo sandwich, she almost cried. She had never had much love for fish, but it was, without a doubt, the best sandwich she’d ever had.

“What are friends for?” Hermione replied, squeezing her hand.

* * *

 

Dr and Dr Granger - _Dan and Emma, please -_ weren’t around a lot in the day, off running their surgery, but Hermione had an au pair called Sandra from Poland, who didn’t seem at all ruffled by suddenly looking after two twelve year old girls instead of one. She spoiled Hedwig madly, saying she was beautiful, and Harry had to quietly check with Hermione she really was a muggle when she took some of Hermione’s old clothes and made them fit Harry’s malnourished body perfectly with only a needle, thread and less than a day's notice.

“Sandra’s a textiles major,” Hermione explained, “you should see what she does in the uni fashion shows.”

In the end, Harry was only with the Grangers for just under two weeks, but by the time she and Hermione went to Diagon Alley on Sandra’s day off with Hermione’s parents, she had put on almost half a stone in weight, and had gone through a minor growth spurt - she was still about a head shorter than Hermione, but she had gained an inch according to Sandra’s tape measure. Excluding her time at Hogwarts, her time with the Grangers was the happiest in Harry’s life.

She and Hermione were weaving through the throngs of people in Diagon Alley, explaining to the Grangers exactly why they couldn’t have silver or gold cauldrons, how exactly the stars influenced magic and so on. They took longer than Harry had taken last year with Hagrid, but that was mostly because Hermione was unable to pass by a shop without going in at least once, and her parents were happy to indulge their only daughter, as they had no deadline.

“I wonder why we need to get so many new defence books this year,” Harry said, rereading her supplies list, “usually it’s only one extra of every year.”

Hermione shrugged. “Maybe the new teacher is a fan? Either way, getting more books is in no way a bad thing.”

Harry rolled her eyes at Hermione’s words, earning herself a light punch on the arm from her best friend. A flash of red in the corner of her eye made her turn. She stood on her tiptoes, and saw it again - a column of red heads on the other side of the alley, barely visible through the crowds. “Hermione!” she said, pointing, “I think the Weasleys are here!”

A smile lit up Hermione’s face. “Mum! Dad!” she cried, “Ron’s family is over there!”

The Drs Granger perked up at the name Ron. Harry realised suddenly this would be their first time meeting Hermione’s soulmate - Harry couldn’t help but hope that Ron didn’t have dirt on his nose again.

Squeezing through the crowds, Harry finally got close enough to see her other best friend’s face. “Oi!” She cried, “Ron!” He turned, scanning the crowd, before catching sight of her and Hermione. His previously bored expression lit up, and he walked towards them, pulling first her and then Hermione into a hug. His nose was, miraculously, clean although there was some soot in his hair.

“I didn’t know you were here!” he said loudly, in order to be heard above the general hubbub. Then, he turned to Harry and pointed at her accusingly, “You didn’t reply to any of my letters! I was this close,” he put his thumb and pointer finger together save for a centimetre gap, “to coming to get you!”

“I can explain!” Harry cried, her face heating up at the thought that Ron had been worried about her. She couldn’t believe she’d doubted her friends. At that moment, Hermione’s parents emerged from the mass of people, looking at Ron with critical eyes.

“Oh, Ron!” Hermione said, gripping his hand in hers, making the boy’s eyebrows shoot up, “These are my parents!”

Ron gulped heavily. “H-hello,” he said to Dan and Emma, the blood rushing away from his face, as he looked at them both. “N-nice to meet you.” Emma’s stern facade broke first, and she smiled at her daughter’s soulmates nerves, whilst Dan continued to scan him, as if looking for any visible imperfections.

“Ron!” Another female voice cried, older. Harry recognised the redheaded woman who she’d followed onto platform 9 and three quarters the previous year, and felt incredibly stupid for not realising she was Ron’s mother. She beckoned her son into the bookstore, before turning back to the rest of her brood.

“We could, um, go in,” Ron said in a loud voice, “away from the noise?”

The Grangers nodded, and the five of them trooped into the bookshop, which was also fairly packed, but you could at least hear people talking normally. Hermione’s eyes lit up at a display near the front of the store. “There’s a book signing!” She squealed, like most children would squeal about Christmas.

“Only five books other than your school books,” Emma told her daughter sternly, “you need to be able to carry them all, remember?”

Hermione nodded quickly, excited. Emma then turned to Harry, “If you want, we can get you a few extra books as well.”

Harry’s face heated up. “Oh no,” she said quickly, “that’s alright. I have my own money for school and stuff.”

Emma, thankfully, accepted this, causing Harry to sigh in relief. She hated the idea of being a charity case for the Grangers. Ron was still squirming at her side, nervousness pouring off of him. “Would you, um, like to meet my mum and dad?” He asked the Grangers.

“Sounds like a good idea,” Dan said, apparently relenting on his attempt to burn through Ron’s head with his eyes alone. Relieved, Ron ran off into the line, tugging out the same woman from earlier, as well as an equally redhaired man, who had a lanky build and kind eyes.

“Mum, Dad,” Ron said, “this is Mr and Mrs Granger. Hermione’s parents.”

“Dr and Dr,” Emma corrected, reaching over to shake Ron’s father’s hand. “But please, call us Dan and Emma.”

Mrs Weasley, and her son, blushed a deep pink - Ron from embarrassment, Mrs Weasley from pleasure. “Oh, we’re so pleased to meet you! Ron has been telling us all about Hermione-”

“I’m Arthur, and this is Molly. You must be Ron’s soulmate’s par-” Mr Weasley said, before his face lit up in realisation, cutting himself off mid-sentence, “But- that means- why, you’re muggles! This is just excellent-”

Apparently satisfied both sets of parents had been properly introduced and distracted with each other, Ron made his getaway, Hermione and Harry on his heels. “I feel like I’m going to be sick,” Ron said to them both, the tops of his ears a deep red.

Hermione frowned worriedly. “I didn’t mean to put you on the spot,” she said, wringing her hands, “my parents just really wanted to meet you-”

“Don’t worry about it,” Ron said with a queasy smile, relaxing now that the adults were a fair distance away, “I just- yeah. Better it’s over now.”

“They seem to like each other,” Harry said, looking back at where the Granger and Weasley parents were in deep conversation, Mrs Weasley having taken Emma’s hands in her own and patting them. For a moment, she had almost forgotten that her soulmate had murdered her parents when they had come face to face for the first time, instead of being nervous to meet them.

“Yeah,” Hermione said with a relieved smile, the expression matching Ron’s.

“Plus,” Ron said, brightening up further, “Mum’s not gonna force us to get an autograph from Gilderoy Lockhart, the tosser.”

“Oh, is he the one doing the signing?” Hermione asked, standing on her tiptoes, “We’ve got tons of his books on the list this year.”

“Don’t remind me,” Ron said darkly, “Mum’s got a crush on him.”

Harry looked nervously at the large throng of people around what she assumed was Lockhart’s table, “We do need to get them though,” she said, biting her lip. “Maybe we could wait until the crowds gone down a bit, get the rest of them first?”

“Good idea,” Ron said, although Hermione pouted.

“Five non-school books of your choice,” Harry reminded the girl, who perked up at the reminder.

By the time they’d got all of their books - both school books, and Hermione’s treasured five non-school books that had changed about twenty times - the crowd had gone down considerably. Scanning the remaining people, Harry could see the rest of the Weasley clan - with the exception of Molly and Arthur, who were still in deep conversation with the Grangers (what _were_ they talking about?) were in the queue. Reluctantly, the trio joined the rest of the Weasley clan - the twins immediately began mercilessly teasing Ron about meeting Hermione’s parents. “Never a problem we had,” Fred - at least, Harry thought it was Fred - said to his twin.

“Not at all, George,” said George, grinning. “No awkwardness at all, no siree!”

“Like we’d known them all our lives!”

“Like family, we were!”

The Weasley twins were one of the rarer cases - but not unheard of - where siblings were soulmates. But in fairness, if the twins weren’t each other’s other halves, Harry couldn’t imagine who would be able to keep up with the tricky duo. The way they were on the Quidditch pitch, as well as the way they could finish each other’s sentences, often made Harry wonder if the twins had some kind of mental bond. They seemed more like one person than two, most of the time.

 _Forge_ wrapped around one twins wrist, _Gred_ on the other, both in an uneven childlike scrawl. Toddler speak and nicknames the twins still kept for each other, but no one could ever be sure which was which and who the names were referring to.

Ron was blushing as red as a tomato. In the end, it was their youngest sibling, and only sister, who stuck up for her brother; “Stop it,” the small girl said firmly, “Ron was right to be nervous.”

The twins made retching noises, but Ron smiled at his sister. “Thanks, Gin.”

Before Ron could say anything else, the line moved up, and they were at the front of the line. Gilderoy Lockhart was a very handsome man, with perfectly coiffed blonde hair, baby blue silk robes, and a photographer at his back, whose camera emitted a puff of smoke every time he took a picture. Percy, the oldest of Ron’s brothers still attending Hogwarts, set down his pile of books, but before Lockhart even so much as opened the cover, his piercing blue eyes fell on Harry.

“By my life,” Lockhart said, jumping to his feet, “it can’t be Harriet Potter!”

Harry wanted to fall through the floor. A rush of whispers came from the remaining witches in line, and Harry was incredibly relieved that they hadn’t tried to get their Defence books earlier when the bookshop had been practically heaving with people. Lockhart lurched forward, and before Harry realised what was happening, he was pulling her towards the camera. Her face burned red as Lockhart beamed at her, shaking her hand with a vice like grip, the puffs from the camera bathing the room in smoke. “Nice big smile, Harriet,” he said through a toothy grin, “together you and I are worth the front page.”

“That’s enough,” a familiar voice said, and Ron reached forward and pulled Harry right back to where she’d been before. She could have kissed him in gratitude, but her voice didn’t seem to be working to be able to even say _thanks_ , so she gave him a grateful look instead.

Looking a little cross, Lockhart looked over to the cameraman, and mouthed something that looked like _did you get it?_ At the camera man’s nod, his bright grin returned even stronger than before, if that was possible.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” he crowed, “When young Harriet Potter came in here to get my autobiography, _Magical Me_ -” Harry tried to disappear behind the Weasley clan, to no effect - people parted around her like the Red Sea, “she had no idea that she and her classmates at Hogwarts would be getting the _real_ magical me! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I have great pleasure and pride in announcing that this September, I will be taking up the post of Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry!”

“Oh, for fu-” Ron began, thankfully drowned out by the applause of the crowd before his mother could hear.

“Can we go?” Harry begged, and she almost escaped, before a harried looking employee came up to her and dumped the entirety of Gilderoy Lockhart’s published works in her arms. She staggered, and set them down awkwardly. Ginny, she noticed, was looking much like a rabbit in the headlights at the mess. She was also the only Weasley child who didn’t have a set of books.

“Here,” she said on a whim, and the younger girl started at being addressed, “you can have these, if you want.” She would get her own later - she didn’t much care for the way Lockhart had grabbed at her, and Ginny had stood up for Ron earlier.

“Thanks,” Ginny said, blinking down at the brand new books, a smile tugging at the sides of her mouth. She and Harry piled them into her cauldron, which was doubling as the Weasley’s shopping bag. As the two girls rose, a shadow fell over them - for one terrible moment Harry feared it might be Lockhart, back again to try and drag her back to take some more photographs, but instead she came face to face with a man she didn’t know. His hair was so blonde it was almost white, and he walked with a black cane that had a hissing snake’s head on top. His face as he surveyed the two girls made Harry feel like he thought she and Ginny were something nasty he had stepped in.

“Ladies,” he said in a cold voice, and Harry pulled herself to her feet, looking around for some form of escape. For all that she didn’t know this man, she knew what hatred looked like; she had seen it all her life, on the faces of the Dursleys, and more recently Snape, her potions professor.

Harry swallows, and nods at him, very ready to pull Ginny away, but she sees a face she _does_ recognise behind the man. A boy with the same ice blonde hair, but not the same expression - she searches for how she knows him, before realising they met in Madam Malkin’s the year before. He was in her year - Draco Malfoy. Sorted into Slytherin before the hat had even touched his platinum hair.

“Hi,” she said in a weaker voice than she wanted to. He nodded at her in acknowledgement, and his father - it had to be his father, they looked so alike - looked at his son in askance.

“You are acquainted?”

“We are in the same year,” Draco said, his voice sounding a little bit strangled.

“How… _interesting_.”

The way the elder Malfoy said the word made Harry feel like he was actually saying _how disgusting._ She started backing away, Ginny in step with her, when Ron and Hermione came out of the crowd, both also carrying Lockhart’s books.

“Lockhart’s a right git,” Ron was saying, “I can’t believe we’re going to be stuck with him as a-” He stopped talking as he saw exactly who was standing before them. His eyes narrowed. “ _Malfoy_ ,” he said, voice full of vitriol.

“ _Weasel_ ,” Draco said, and Harry blinked as she saw his face transform from awkwardness to hatred. It was like he was a different person. She looked between him and Mr Malfoy. Yes, definitely father and son.

Ron dropped his books in Ginny’s cauldron, his chin rising. “He giving you any trouble?” He said to Harry and Ginny, who shook their heads. While on the one hand, Harry wanted to feel embarrassed that Ron felt like he had to protect them, perhaps because they were girls, she also felt very small and vulnerable after Lockhart. She settled for tugging at Ron’s jacket.

“Leave it,” she said quietly, “it’s not worth it.”

Ron’s face was stony for a moment, before he turned his back on the Malfoys. “Let’s go,” he said gruffly, his annoyance given away in his body language. Hermione seemed to let out a breath, and the whole thing seemed to be almost avoided when Mr Weasley appeared out of the crowd, eyes glued to Malfoy Sr’s face. Ron winced as he saw his father.

“We need to get out of here,” he said, herding Harry, Ginny and Hermione away, “Dad and Lucius Malfoy have a feud-”

Harry didn’t hear the exact words that were exchanged between the two men, they spoke in low, _mean_ voices, but Ron’s words were proved horribly correct when Mr Weasley reared back and punched Mr Malfoy square in the face. The two men had fallen to the floor, books raining down on them from the shelves they disturbed. Draco watched the scene with wide eyes, staggering backwards in shock, apparently not quite as prepared as Ron had been for the altercation. The twins muscled their way through the crowd to cheer on their father - Percy put his head in his hands. Mrs Weasley shrieked in anger, and waded in to pull her husband off the other wizard.

“Arthur Weasley,” she screamed with a red face, “how could you-”

Mr Weasley’s lip was split. As Mr Malfoy made it to his feet, Harry saw he had a black eye forming. His eyes met Harry’s and he sneered, tossing his head back so his hair went out of his face. His hand, Harry suddenly realised, was clenched around one of the Weasley’s old second hand _Book of Spells,_ and he threw it at Ginny, who somehow managed to catch it.

“Take your book, girl - it’s the best your father can give you-”

Mr Weasley’s eyes were almost burning with hatred, and he looked like he would have charged Mr Malfoy all over again if his wife hadn’t had an iron grip on his shoulder. For his part, Malfoy beckoned to his son, who still seemed a little shaken from the brawl, and swept out of the shop.

Their party split up after that - Ron and Ginny seemed incredibly embarrassed by the whole thing, _even if they do have a feud,_ Ron said grumpily, _he shouldn’t have done that in public,_ as did Percy. Fred and George thought it was brilliant, and argued that Ron would have too if he hadn’t been so stressed about making a good impression on the Grangers. Mrs Weasley was almost in tears, and Mr Weasley looked too angry to think too much about his actions right then. Emma and Dan quickly extracted their daughter and Harry and hurried over to the muggle side of London, looking rather scared.

“That was certainly… eventful,” Emma said once they were all safely in the car, and Dan laughed a little hysterically at his wife’s understatement.

* * *

 

The morning of September 1st, Harry and Hermione were off for King’s Cross at quarter past ten, Sandra having smothered Harry with hugs and kisses, and a newly adjusted school robe safely folded in the bottom of her trunk. “It’s a bit odd,” she’d said in a low tone with her barely-there accent, “but it’s doable.”

The Grangers couldn’t go through to Platform 9 and three quarters, but they still drove the girls down and walked with them to the space between platforms nine and ten, telling Hermione to be good and do her homework and to write them letters. Harry almost laughed at the idea of Hermione needing to be told to do her homework, but managed to hold it in. When they reached the spot, Harry watched Hermione get hugged by her parents, and received a firm handshake from Dan and a quick embrace from Emma.

“Who’ll go first?” Dan asked, and Hermione and Harry looked at each other. Hermione had told Harry the night before that she was a bit afraid of running into the barrier - even though she knew it didn’t hurt, and that it wasn’t really solid, she couldn’t make her mind believe that.

“I will,” Harry volunteered, and Hermione flashed her a grateful smile.

She looked around - other than for the Grangers and the conductor, and a few families at the far end that Harry guessed were magical by the owls that they had on their trollies, the station was deserted. She stepped back, and walked with purpose towards the barrier - when she was only a couple of feet away, she broke into a run, grinning with the thought that she’d soon be back at Hogwarts-

**_CRASH._ **

Her trolley made a loud clanging noise as it hit the brickwork, her head snapping back as she was launched backwards, Hedwig’s cage rolling off the overturned trolley, the owl inside squawking indignantly. Above her, Hermione’s worried face looked down on her, and Harry groaned, the wind knocked right out of her.

The conductor, noticing the commotion, came over, blowing into his whistle. “What in the blazes do you think-” he began, turning an odd shade of purple.

“Lost control of the trolley,” Harry gasped, and the Grangers jumped in, apologising profusely.

Once the man was satisfied, he helped right Harry’s trolley, and picked up Hedwig’s cage. He was rather taken with the bird; _quite a fright you’ve been through,_ he murmured, _poor beauty,_ and Hedwig preened under his admiring gaze. When he gave Harry the cage back, he fixed her with a stern look. “You be careful now,” he warned her, “animals are very prone to shock. Make sure to give her plenty of rest.” 

As soon as he was out of earshot, Harry turned to Hermione and her parents. “It was solid,” she said in a whisper, unable to say anything but the obvious. Emma frowned worriedly.

“Hermione,” Emma said, placing her hand on the brickwork - it was solid for her, but she was a muggle, after all. “You try.”

Her friend did, and found the wall to be made of plain old brick for her too. She opened her mouth, and closed it again. “There’s never been an instance of the platform closing too early,” she muttered to herself, before opening her trunk and pulling out _Hogwarts: A History_ , clearly determined to double check. By that time, the other magical families who had been at the other end of the station had caught up.

“Was that-” One of the boys asked, a higher year that she thought was in Hufflepuff, staring at the wall, “was that what I thought it was?” His father looked equally as confused as his son. Walking up to the pillar, he surreptitiously tried to step into the wall. All he got was a stubbed toe.

The other boy Harry did know - Dean Thomas was a muggleborn like Hermione, and he and Seamus had been the first pair of soulmates she had ever seen bond the year before. His mother and the Grangers began talking about the strangeness of the portal, talking about the unreliability of magic as opposed to an escalator, and the Hufflepuff came over and introduced himself as Cedric.

“It’ll be fixed soon,” he said optimistically, “probably just a blip.”

Almost an hour later, there were hundreds of people stuck on the muggle King’s Cross platform. The conductor kept on walking over, asking if he could help anyone, and was waved off by increasingly frantic wizards and witches. “Why are you all here anyway?” he said, scratching his head.

“Owls,” Harry blurted, “We’re part of an owl training school.”

He stared at her, as if he wasn’t sure whether or not she was pulling his leg. But thankfully, other parents had heard her and began lifting up their owl cages. “Yep,” Lee Jordan, the twins’ best mate elaborated, “got to show them how to fetch. Hunt. Breed. Those sorts of things. We’re moving the entire training centre to Scotland, you see. From London. Big operation.”

Left with no other explanation, the guard was forced to accept this excuse. He wandered off, shaking his head. “He will have to be obliviated,” said Tracey Davis’ father, his long face set in a frown, “this whole thing is highly irregular. Heads will roll once the obliviators have to be sent out, mark my words-”

The clock hit eleven o’clock. Everybody stared, open mouthed, as the platform wall remained stubbornly a wall.

“This is ridiculous,” a woman said, her blonde hair perfectly coiffed around her head, “I’m going to the Ministry.”

A few parents opted to join her, moving to the toilets to apparate away - that was teleporting, apparently, and Harry could not _wait_ until she learned how to do that. The Weasleys had arrived just before the clock struck eleven, and Ron quickly found Hermione and Harry in the crowd. “I thought we’d miss the train,” he said, panting, “but it looks like the train missed us!”

At about twelve, the ministry delegation returned, flanked by a team of officials, who told everyone that the situation was well in hand. “What exactly is the situation?” A woman who could only be Seamus Finnigan’s mother with her thick accent.

It quickly became clear the officials did not actually know why or how the platform had closed. “This has never happened before,” they muttered amongst themselves, before excusing themselves to the toilets to apparate back to the ministry again. By then, Harry had been at the train station for over two hours, and had long ago sat down on the floor with the rest of the students, playing cards that Dean had brought.

The circle of players had originally consisted of just Harry, Cedric, Dean and Hermione, but now pretty much everyone was playing a form of poker - it wasn’t _quite_ poker, because somebody’s parent had long before sneakily multiplied the deck of cards so that everyone could play, so people kept on getting full houses. Either way, it was fun, and even the most snobbish purebloods who had declared themselves to be above playing muggle card games had eventually sat down and been dealt a hand. It turned out that Padma Patil, Parvati’s twin sister, was a bit of a prodigy at cards - she’d had to roll up the sleeves of her shirt to prove that she wasn’t cheating.

The ministry officials returned with a small army of obliviators, and Professor McGonagall. “Oh my,” she said, looking at the masses of students that were stranded on the Muggle side of the station, before making her way to the pillar and putting her ear to the brick. She then began squinting at the wall, and waving her wand to conjure up blocks of colours that Harry couldn’t understand. After about fifteen minutes, she banished the colours and turned round to the rowdy pack of parents.

“The platform entrance has been tampered with,” she said with a sigh, massaging her temples. A cacophony of exclamations broke out at that statement. “The express left at eleven o’clock, as it is remotely controlled by magic, but I wager there are very few students on it. It appears we need to find an alternate way to get everyone to Hogwarts.” The conversations erupted again, and in the end McGonagall had to put her wand to her throat and magically amplify her voice to be heard. Harry was glad the obliviators had come just in time, otherwise the statute of secrecy would probably have failed that morning.

“Everybody should leave their luggage here, apart from pets and wands. Make sure it has your name on. The express will return to the station when it has ferried the few students who did get on to Hogwarts, and they will arrive safely tomorrow morning. Parents who can side-along apparate,” McGonagall’s amplified voice addressed the crowd, “please take your children to Hogsmeade, but only if you are _totally confident_ that you can do so without splinching yourselves or your children. Keep in mind it is a long way away. Everyone else will have to floo into Hogsmeade. Once you are in Hogsmeade, please walk up to the castle in an orderly fashion - there will be teachers at the gates to mark your child’s presence.”

Immediately, a flurry of pops were heard. Cedric’s father pulled him up, and the older boy had barely been able to say goodbye when he disappeared, leaving only the trunk he’d been sitting on behind. Most of the purebloods disappeared, and none of the muggleborns did. Less than half of the half bloods went. The station was still utterly crammed, but there was a little more breathing room. “Everyone else,” McGonagall said in her normal voice, which was now loud enough to be heard, “follow me.”

They ended up walking through London under disillusionment spells in small groups of five or so, with one magical person per group to keep up the spell, until they appeared in front of a large building after about half an hour that the Grangers and Dean’s mum walked straight past, and had to be tugged back to. Everyone poured in, the officials having to redirect the muggle parents inside. It was like a library - large, plush, library with several elderly wizards reading or snoring in front of large fireplaces, and a lot of biscuits. Hardly any of the old men seemed to notice that their building had been invaded by school children, and those that did didn’t seem particularly perturbed, as if a flood of hundreds of adolescents was a perfectly normal Wednesday morning activity.

“The Vilnius Club has kindly agreed to allow us to use their fireplaces and floo connection,” McGonagall told them, not missing a beat as the hall filled up, “and we must do so as quickly as we can. To travel by floo, everybody must take a pinch of floo powder-” she picked up some black dust, and made sure everyone could see, “and say ‘The Hog’s Head, Hogsmeade’ as clearly as they can before throwing the powder into the fireplace, and stepping into the flames. You will not be burned. If you are not clear when pronouncing where you want to go, you may end up in the wrong place. If you do end up in the wrong place, you have permission to use your wands, or any basic spell you know from home or your studies that is _subtle,_ for example, _Wingardium Leviosa_.

"Those of you who do not know any spells, give it a go anyway, whilst exercising caution - even an attempt should show up on the Trace, and the Ministry will know where to find you. The Ministry is tracking the Trace very closely this afternoon in light of this morning’s confusion, specifically so they will know exactly where you are, so all you need to do is sit tight. You may _only_ cast spells this afternoon - and only to be located. Any other use will constitute as underage magic, and will result in a warning on your official record. Understood?” She looked particularly hard at Fred and George when she said that, who nodded grumpily at the constraint.

A mutter of assent from the rest of the students. McGonagall looked satisfied. “Remember, clear pronunciation! We’re going through one at a time, so please can students form an _orderly_ queue.”

The queue was not quite orderly, but the system went fairly well considering they had packed about five hundred children into what appeared to be an old fashioned gentleman’s club, and left them to their own devices. When it was Harry’s turn, finally, to throw the dust into the fireplace, she spoke as clearly as she could, her wand stuck in her pocket, and Hedwig’s cage in her hand. “The Hog’s Head, Hogsmeade.”

The fire roared up, but didn’t burn, and she felt weightless for a moment before she was thrown forward by an invisible force. Hands caught her before she hit the floor, Hedwig ruffled her feathers, and she saw people she didn’t recognise waiting anxiously by the fireplace. “Good girl,” the pretty woman who caught her said, “go out that door, turn left, and follow the path up to Hogwarts. Quick as you can.” As Harry was leaving, the next student came through, to much the same reception.

By the time Harry made it to the gates of Hogwarts, she was really quite cold. It was a particularly windy autumn day, and she had expected to be able to change into her winter uniform on the Express - the thin cardigan she wore now didn’t quite cut it for a Scottish day. Hagrid was nodding people through at the gate, a clipboard looking comically small in his large grip, and beamed at her when he saw her. “‘Arry!” he cried, “This is a ruddy mess, but all’s well that ends well, eh?”

As soon as she got into the castle, Harry made a beeline straight for Gryffindor Tower. To her relief, the Fat Lady was wedged open, as no password had yet been set. She carried Hedwig up to the second year girl’s dorm (receiving some rather strange looks from the portraits, probably due to her muggle garb), where Lavender sat alone, doing her toenails in sparkly purple polish. Even the excitable Lavender seemed to be somewhat dampened by the strangeness of the morning.

Harry wasn’t sure what she was going to do when she went down for the Welcoming Feast, still wearing her muggle clothes, but she noticed several students who were in the same position. Most of the upper years had their uniforms on, but most people were still in their normal clothes. Harry thought that the student populace looked a bit brighter than usual, if nothing else. Hunger had begun to seriously catch up to her by that time, and although she did her duty, applauding the new Gryffindor firsties, mainly she just wanted it to be over so the food would arrive. When _Weasley, Ginevra_ was sorted into Gryffindor, she cheered more for the fact that they were at the end of the register than out of house pride.

* * *

 

Despite how puzzled the teachers were, the front page spread on the prophet proclaiming _HOGWARTS CHILDREN LEFT STRANDED,_ and the way that Hermione refused to let the matter drop for _weeks_ , the strangeness of the Express was eventually consigned to something that Dumbledore would have to figure out in due course, and became little more than the setting for several funny and incredibly exaggerated stories of people meeting their soulmates.

Half of the year’s firsties had some kind of card game remark as their words, many of whom revealed their parents had been quite relieved to find out that their children did not in fact have a gambling addiction in their futures, and were instead just playing a hundred strong game of poker on their first day of school. It was a bit insane for Harry to wrap her head around - that poker game she had begun had actually been destined to occur since the first set of words appeared on the wrists of the firsties who had met their soulmates the day before, probably as they were developing in their mother’s womb. When she said as much to Dean, who was the owner of the original pack of cards used, he blinked twice and then stared into space, looking very much like he was questioning the universe itself.

“But it makes no sense!” Hermione said for what had to be the thousandth time. “Why would anybody tamper with the barriers if they weren’t going to do anything? None of the people who got in really early were hurt, the train set off as normal, and the people stuck outside weren’t ambushed in the station in the confusion or anything! What did they want? Nobody this powerful does something so public for no reason!”

Ron, who had been studying the chessboard between himself and his soulmate for the past ten minutes, barely even looked up. “Fred and George would do anything for a prank,” he said evenly, “and that doesn’t have any particular pay off either.”

Hermione huffed, and turned to Harry with raised eyebrows that gave Harry the nasty feeling she was expected to agree with her best friend. “I agree that it doesn’t make sense,” she said cautiously, causing Hermione to preen, “but… maybe it was just somebody messing around with it? To see if they could?”

Hermione scowled, both at Harry’s non-answer, and Ron’s next move, which put her in check. “I don’t know why I bother,” the brunette witch said mutinously.

“Well, you’ve got to admit,” Harry said, “people are weird. Like Lockhart, right? The man’s clearly incompetent. He was a well respected author, famous-”

“Let’s not forget, five time winner of Witch Weekly’s best smile award,” Ron cut in with an eyeroll. Harry saw Hermione’s lip twitch.

“How could we forget?” Harry agrees, “But - he’s got everything he’s ever wanted, yeah? At least, I assume so by the way he goes on and on. So why come to Hogwarts? He’s not making brilliant money here, is losing repute by the day as he fails to subdue _cornish pixies,_ and won’t last the year out if the curse continues. Makes no sense, but he still did it.”

“People are weird,” Ron said in a tone of finality, “and now that’s been established, Hermione can you please _move?”_

* * *

 

Harry’s second year at Hogwarts soon settled into a comfortable routine - Harry got up, dodged Colin Creevey (a first year muggleborn who had first thought they’d be soulmates, and when that turned out to be a bust, decided he would just follow Harry around all day instead), went to breakfast, slowly woke up as she sipped on her pumpkin juice, went to classes, got nagged by Hermione to do her homework, got begged by Ron to play chess, and got dragged to Quidditch practice by Wood, who had become even more motivated to win the cup this year.

If Wood had been mad about winning the Quidditch cup before, he was nothing short of fanatical now.  The final match of the year before, Harry had been unconscious in the hospital wing after her run in with Voldemort, leaving Gryffindor a seeker short. The defeat had, in the words of Ron, been utterly crushing. Wood had actually _cried._

If Harry had to resign herself to the fact that Wood was always going to be a bit manic about Quidditch, at least it was for a cause Harry could support wholeheartedly. Even though Snape had not turned out to be a murderer, he was still a slimy git who hated her for no reason, and he did _not_ deserve to keep the cup in his office, when it would look much nicer on McGonagall’s mantelpiece instead. But even her loathing of the Potions Master could not keep her enthused for the triweekly four hour practice sessions - even the Weasley twins, who Harry wasn’t entirely certain slept considering how they seemed to be the last to bed at night and the first up in the morning, were growing lethargic.

“Mad with power,” a twin that Harry was fairly sure was George said in a whimper as Wood pulled both he and his brother into the common room, their Quidditch uniforms on back to front, where Harry, Alicia and Katie had already been dragged by Angelina in a similar state of disarray.

“Wood, it’s six in the morning.” Alicia said to the Keeper, who seemed to see nothing wrong with this statement.

“And?”

“It is _six in the morning.”_ Alicia repeated, looking to be on the verge of tears.

“Sooner we get out there, the sooner we get back in,” Wood said, grinning. Harry felt a bit like crying herself at that. Reluctantly, they trooped after their captain, muttering mutinously. Their walk took them to the locker rooms, when Wood decided he was going to do a rousing speech. He even had a diagram of the Quidditch pitch with enchanted arrows wiggling about. If she squinted, Harry thought the arrow labelled ‘Potter’ was done in a squiggly lightning bolt-ish style. That, or she was just far too tired. Oh - oh bloody hell, there was more than one board. _Oh no._

In the end, Harry decided she was perfectly happy to let him talk for as long as he wanted, as she realised she could use the opportunity to get a quick nap in. Katie Bell seemed to have no problem with Harry resting her head on her shoulder as long as she could rest her head on Harry’s own, and she almost dozed off after what must have been over an hour of unceasing monologue from the captain, when Wood said in a loud voice: “So! Is that clear? Any questions?”

Harry gave Wood a bleary smile. Katie rubbed her eyes. The twins woke with a start from where they’d been leaning against each other.

When they were finally outside, the fresh air did revive Harry a little. There was nothing quite like flying. At the top of the stands, she could make out Ron and Hermione eating breakfast. She had half a mind to fly over there and nick something to eat. But Wood’s firm expression told her there was no way that was happening, so she threw her leg over the broom and rose up into the air, smiling at the sensation of the wind whistling past her face. Not even the small figure of Colin snapping away, or the emptiness of her belly could ruin this feeling.

And then the Slytherin team swaggered onto the pitch.

As a rule, Harry did not have much of a problem with Slytherins. As long as they left her and hers alone, she left them and theirs alone. But she had been woken up at an ungodly hour, had to sit through a lecture so boring it would make Binns want to yawn, had missed breakfast, and to add insult to injury she had barely got up in the air when Flint was waving around a permission slip saying they had the pitch.

“To train your new seeker?” Wood read from the note, before looking up at Flint, “Who’s your new seeker?”

As if they had practiced it, the Slytherins parted, revealing Draco Malfoy. His icy blonde hair shone in the morning sun so brightly it made Harry’s eyes hurt.

“You Lucius Malfoy’s son?” Fred asked, his nose wrinkling in dislike.

“Funny you should mention Draco’s father,” Flint said with a nasty grin, “Let me show you the generous gift he's made to the Slytherin team." All seven of the players held out their broomsticks - their very, very new broomsticks. _Nimbus Two Thousand and Ones,_ Harry’s mind supplied to her jealously. Her eyes narrowed at the smug look on all their faces as Wood grew redder and redder.

"Very latest model. Only came out last month," said Flint carelessly, flicking a speck of dust from the end of his own. "I believe it outstrips the old Two Thousand series by a considerable amount. As for the old Cleansweeps-” he smiled nastily at Fred and George, who were both clutching Cleansweep Fives, “sweeps the board with them.” There was a thick silence at this statement, and Harry’s mouth moved quicker than her mind did.

“Tragically,” she lightly, every eye turning toward her as she broke the tense atmosphere, “your broom can’t catch the snitch for you, eh, Malfoy?”

Two pink spots appeared high on the blonde boy’s thin face. “We’ll see,” he snapped, looking a lot like his father, and not at all like the nervous boy she had met in Flourish and Blotts a few weeks before.

“Anyway,” Flint said with a sneer, “I’m going to have to ask you to leave. This is our field now, and you can take your spies with you.” He nodded toward the side of the field, and Harry turned to see Hermione and Ron coming toward them.

"What's happening?" Ron asked Harry. "Why aren't you playing? And what's _he_ doing here?" He was looking at Malfoy, with undisguised loathing in his eyes.

"I'm the new Slytherin Seeker, Weasley," said Malfoy, smug smile back in place. "Everyone's just been admiring the brooms my father's bought our team." Ron couldn’t help but gape at the broom. Harry could have killed him at the longing in his eyes, as it gave Malfoy an in with his next insult: “Good, aren’t they? I’m sure the Gryffindor Quidditch team could try and raise some money to buy some new brooms - those old Cleansweeps could be raffled off. I’m sure a museum would bid.”

The Slytherins roared with laughter, and George’s eye twitched. Surprisingly, it was Hermione who was first to respond. “At least no one on the Gryffindor team had to buy their way in, _they_ got in on pure talent." Hermione’s words clearly hit their mark as Draco’s expression flickered.

"No one asked your opinion, you filthy little Mudblood," he spat.

Everything happened at once then - Fred and George leaped forward, Flint’s quick reflexes being the only thing that saved Malfoy from their wrath. Ron went white with rage, and went for his wand. Wood’s hands turned into fists at his side. Alicia shrieked “How _dare_ you!”

Harry stepped forward unopposed, as Flint was still tied up keeping the twins at bay, and kicked Malfoy right in the balls. She felt she had hit her mark with devastating accuracy as he went down with one blow, a whimper falling from his lips. His hands flew cup his groin, and he curled up in the fetal position on the grass. “She kicked me!” He screeched, voice higher than usual, eyes bulging in his face.

“I’ll kick you again, you little piece of-” Harry didn’t get to finish her sentence, as a jet of dark green light hit Malfoy’s pain-twisted face with a _crack!_ and he grabbed at his throat, crawling onto on all fours on the grass, his other injury for the moment forgotten, looking like he was going to vomit - and he did, but it wasn’t sick, it was a slug, coming out of his mouth in a disgusting ball of slime-

“You-” he tried to say, but threw up another slug, “I’ll get-”

Harry turned, and saw Ron with a look of utmost satisfaction on his face. Harry gave him a shallow nod of approval, which he returned. At his side, Hermione was gaping, and Colin raised his camera for a picture, which Harry was very happy to step away so he could get it properly.

“Looks like your new seeker can’t train,” said Wood to Flint with a cheery grin, as he was forced to pick Malfoy’s puking form up, whilst trying to keep his mouth far away from his own body, “so the pitch is ours.” Then he turned on his heel, uncaring of Flint’s burning glare, and made the motion for everyone to get back in the air.

Wood knew that they wouldn’t be able to actually practice, but it was the principle of the thing - within ten minutes, more or less, Snape was to stalk out of the caste and demand they stop, giving both Harry and Ron detention. Wood predicted this with perfect accuracy, as they hung in the air, waiting on the potion’s professor.

“Sorry about ruining practice,” she said to the captain.

“Nah,” Wood waved her away with an almost peaceful smile as he looked down at the school and grounds from high up above, “it was worth it.”

* * *

 

The detention with Lockhart was very almost not worth it. Yeah, sure, Malfoy had vomited slugs for half a day until the curse had worn off, and Hermione had had tears of gratitude in her eyes, but…  _Lockhart_. Harry would have preferred scrubbing cauldrons under Filch.

But finally, all his fan mail was addressed, and Harry made her escape. She was all too ready to get back to Gryffindor Tower and fall into bed and forget all about stupid Lockhart and his stupid autographs and his stupid fans-

_Let me rip… tear… kill… come to me, come to me… let me kill you… let me taste you..._

Harry froze in the middle of the corridor. She became very aware that she was completely and utterly alone, except for… whatever that was. Slowly, very slowly, she turned, her wand held out in front of her.

Nothing. The corridor was empty. She looked back the other way again. Deserted. _I’m going mad,_ she thought to herself, slightly hysterical. She half sprinted back to the tower, and didn’t really breathe until the Fat Lady had swung shut behind her.

“Harry?” Hermione was sat in front of the fire, book open. “Are you alright? You’ve been gone for almost four hours!”

“Fine,” she said with a smile. By the look on Hermione’s face, it had turned out more like a grimace.

“Are you alright?” Her friend asked, and Harry nod.

“Just… you know. Lockhart.”

Satisfied, Hermione turned back to her book, and Harry allowed herself to sink into the sofa. Her heart was still thumping in her chest.

* * *

 

It happens again at Halloween.

Harry had brushed it off as a fluke, her overactive imagination playing tricks on her. She knew what happened to people who heard voices in their heads - she could hear Aunt Petunia’s soaps through the walls of Privet Drive, and there were a lot of people who went mad in those, and were sent off to the asylum posthaste. Harry had no intention of going to a madhouse because of one hearing voices incident.

But she’s just got to her treacle tart, her absolute favourite dessert, but hasn’t even managed a bite when she hears it again. It’s the same voice from before, she’s sure of it, and it’s not all that loud - but it’s unmistakable, underneath the hubbub of the hall and the chatter of Ron and Hermione and Neville and Lavender and Seamus.

_...rip… tear… kill..._

“Oi, Harry,” Ron said, jostling her arm, “pass us the trifle, will you?”

As if in a dream, Harry did, eyes unfocused as she strained to hear the words. It was like she was on a different wavelength that nobody else could find - nobody else showed any signs of hearing the voice at all. _I’m going mad,_ she thought to herself hysterically.

_...hungry, hungry… hungry in the dark… time to feed, time to kill…_

She stood up abruptly. “I need the toilet,” she announced. Hermione looked at her a little worriedly, but nobody else really reacted, and Harry half jogged out of the hall. It wasn’t safe in there, where everyone could see her. She needed to think, she needed the quiet-

 _Blood!_ The voice cried joyously, even louder now that she was away from the noise of the feast, _I smell blood! Come to me… let me tear you, rip you… Let me devour you… So very hungry…_

“One, two, three,” Harry began to count to herself, letting her head rest against the stone wall, hands shaking as she forced herself not to follow the voice. “One, two-”

_I am coming, I am coming, oh yes, I am coming to rip, I am coming to tear, I am coming to kill and feed…_

“Stop it,” she said to herself firmly. “Stop it. Stop it.”

 _Let me own you..._ the voice carried on, and she found her legs moving again, and she didn’t have the strength to stop herself, _let me destroy you.._ . The voice was like a song, a terrible song, a song that pulled her closer and closer, like a spider reeling in a fly caught in their web, and she had to hear, she had to know, she had to _see -_ she might not be mad, there might be a troll or something else in the castle, like last year-

She turns a corner, and stops. The voice has fallen blissfully silent. And the scene before her - she hadn’t done that, she tells herself shakily. She hadn’t. No matter how fast she had arrived, she had just been in the Great Hall. People had _seen_ her.

 _THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED,_ red writing on the wall declared. _ENEMIES OF THE HEIR, BEWARE._ There was a cat hanging beneath it - Mrs Norris, her mind supplied - stiff as a board, staring into nothingness. _It was just an animal_ , her mind said over and over, brokenly, and the words were no comfort.

The floor was soaking wet, and Harry’s legs shook as she staggered through the pools of water. She couldn’t be found here, she _cannot_ not be found here, they’d ask too many questions, they’d know about the voice, they’d think she was mad, send her to the madhouse like the characters on _Coronation Street_ -

She fled. The wet soles of her shoes slapped loudly against the castle stone. Where could she go, where could she go? It would be suspicious if she went back to the feast like this, trembling and white with terror. Too soon to go back to Gryffindor Tower, if anyone had stayed behind they’d ask questions about why she came back far too early. But she couldn’t stay here, she couldn’t stay here-

Desperate, she ducks into the girl’s bathroom, head pounding. She hobbled over to the sink, and turned the tap round and round until it became loose enough to let out a trickle of water, the basin full already. It must have been left on, a rational part of her mind said, and she thrust her wrists into the sink. It was cool, and wonderful against her clammy skin. She splashed her face with the water, trying to forget, trying to calm down. It was icy, and blissful, and painful in a way.

“Who are you?”

Harry let out a shout of alarm, almost falling over on the wet floor. Her head snapped around, looking around madly for the source of the voice. But- but there was no one. Oh no, not another voice, one was enough-

“Up _here_ ,” the voice said, annoyed, and Harry looked up. A translucent, grey figure hovered in the air - a ghost, Harry’s mind supplied. Not one she’d seen before, but a ghost, not just a voice.

“I-” she started to say, voice breaking, “you-”

“Are you here to make fun of me?” The ghost swoops down suddenly, and she’s younger than Harry had been expecting; younger than any ghost she thought she’d ever seen. She could have been in Harry’s year.

“No!” She said, shocked despite herself. “I just- I just needed somewhere to go.”

The ghost sniffed, peering at Harry’s red rimmed eyes. “Was somebody being mean to you?” The thought seemed to actually cheer her up.

“No,” Harry choked out. The ghost didn’t look like she believed her. “I’m _fine_.”

The girl squinted at her for a moment, distrustful, before flying up into the air again. “You can stay for a little while,” she decreed haughtily, “but this is _my_ toilet. You can’t stay for too long.”

“T-thanks,” Harry said, throat tight. The ghost sniffed, and catapulted suddenly into a toilet with a wailing scream. If Harry hadn’t already been a mess, that would have sent her over the edge. Clutching at her heart, Harry leaned against the porcelain sinks, and forced herself to breathe, let her mind catch up with all she had seen. She would just stay here for a bit, until the cat was discovered, then no one would ask any difficult questions.

* * *

 

“You were in Moaning Myrtle’s toilet?!” Hermione said, loudly. Lavender and Parvati looked over from Parvati’s bed, where they were braiding each other’s hair.

Harry shrugged awkwardly, “I didn’t know there was a ghost in there.”

“How did you not know?” Lavender asked, raising an eyebrow, “She’s not exactly the shy and retiring type.”

“I’ve just never used that bathroom before,” she said defensively, “Hogwarts is a big castle, there’s not exactly a shortage of toilets.”

“Maybe they had to build more,” Parvati muttered, “because nobody uses Myrtle’s toilet. Imagine, sitting down to do your business, and she phases through the door?!” The girl shuddered at the mental image. “If she had to die, why did she have to do it in a toilet? And why does she have to stay there? Nick was killed in London, but he’s in Gryffindor Tower most of the time. I heard that the Grey Lady died in _Albania_ , but she can haunt Ravenclaw without any issue. Why can’t Myrtle haunt anywhere other than that toilet?”

“Maybe she doesn’t want to?” Harry suggested.

“Who wants to stay in a girl’s toilet for eternity?” Parvati said with a snort.

 _Somebody who is afraid,_ Harry wanted to say, but doesn’t. She couldn’t afford to fall out with her roommates over an annoying ghost who gave her grudging sanctuary. She shrugged again, and the conversation turned to what was really on everybody’s minds: the Chamber of Secrets, and the Heir of Slytherin.

“It’s a stupid prank,” Lavender says decisively, “somebody wanted to scare people. Or just Filch, actually. Nobody liked his bloody pet, and can you imagine the heir of Slytherin wasting their time killing a cat when there’s a school full of students? If it had a bit more sparkles and showmanship, I’d say it was the twins.”

“The twins wouldn’t do that,” Hermione said defensively, “they’re not killers.”

“But the cat wasn’t actually _dead,”_ Lavender reminds her, “just petrified.”

Harry frowned. She remembered very clearly the writing on the wall having been done in blood. If the cat had been petrified… “Whose blood was it?”

The other three girls looked over to her. “Huh?” Parvart said.

“The blood,” Harry said, “the blood on the wall. If Mrs Norris was turned into a statue, how could they have used her blood to write it? Statues don’t have blood.”

“It was paint,” Lavender said, rolling her eyes, “the Heir of Slytherin wouldn’t cut _themselves_ to make a point. Slytherin was all about the importance of magical blood. Why would they just throw it at a wall, especially if blood magic could point out the perpetrator in an instant?”

Lavender, having finished her monologue, fluffed her hair. Parvati shook her head, perhaps at Lavender’s disdain, Harry’s ignorance, or at the whole situation. Hermione bit her lip, her eyes lost in thought.

Harry’s dreams that night were frenzied, disjointed, terrifying. There was blood on the walls, blood on her hands, an animal lying prone at her feet. She was laughing. She was laughing, high and cruel. A flash of green light. A scream. Blood on the floor, not water. Blood going up her arms, as if she’s stuck her arms deep in a bath of it, and a voice - _the_ voice in the walls - _I smell blood,_ it chorused in a thousand languages _, I smell BLOOD!_ She tried to run away, but only seemed to get closer to the crime scene with every turn. Moaning Myrtle was a girl, a real girl, but then she was on the floor, glassy eyed and empty, and always afraid, always hiding. _I will return for you, Harriet Potter…_ promised the monster, and Harry believed him.

* * *

 

The castle was not a nice place to be over the next few days. People were scared, distrustful. Ron’s little sister was particularly disturbed by Mrs Norris’ petrification; Ron confided that she was a great cat lover. Harry couldn’t say she shared the love of felines after years of being dropped off with old Mrs Figg, and finding cat hair in her food and clothes for weeks after each visit.

She did feel bad for Ginny though, and all of her year - what a way to start your first year! First the mess at the platform, and now this. Although her first year hadn’t been incident free - the troll breaking in, and Voldemort’s attempted heist were in no way normal issues - it had been fairly normal for the average student whose name was not Harriet Potter.

Harry was still thinking of her nightmare after History of Magic, when Hermione had somehow managed to coax the story of the Chamber of Secrets out of Binns before the old ghost had realised what was happening. “You,” she said to her friend as they packed up their books after class, “are completely, mind blowingly incredible. I am in awe.”

“What she said,” Ron agreed, eyes wide, slinging his satchel over one shoulder.

Hermione blushed a pale pink. “It wasn’t anything,” she said modesty, but Harry could see she was very pleased.

“So, there’s a chamber-” Harry began.

“Allegedly,” Hermione cut in.

“There is _allegedly_ a chamber,” Harry continued, rolling her eyes, “and in it is Slytherin’s monster-”

“Allegedly,” Hermione said again.

“Allegedly _,”_ Harry agreed. “But - in a strictly hypothetical sense - why release the alleged monster from the alleged chamber  _now?”_

“Because the Heir of Slytherin is at Hogwarts,” Hermione replies instantly, before frowning. “But that makes no sense. None of the firsties could do this.”

“Or-” Ron said, sounding suddenly excited. “It’s not a firstie. It’s an older student, who only just found the Chamber. You heard Binns. Dumbledore and the rest of them - they’ve never found it. You’d need at least a year to comb the castle, find it with that extra edge that you have as Heir of Slytherin-”

“So it’s an older student.” Hermione picked up Ron’s train of thought, “our year, at the very youngest. And they’d have to have planned this, for it to start so early in the year-”

_There is a plot- a terrible plot, Dobby has known about it for months now-_

“Dobby!”

Harry didn’t realise she’d spoken aloud until both Hermione and Ron turned to stare at her.

“What’s a Dobby?”

* * *

 

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell us you had an insane house elf ambush you-”

“I cannot believe _you_ did not tell _me_ that the wizarding world hasn’t abolished _slavery-”_

“How in the hell did you guys manage to start an argument from ‘a crazy house elf tracked me down and told me there was a terrible plot going to happen at Hogwarts this year, oh and I keep hearing a voice in the walls, so I might be going insane?!'"

* * *

 

Hermione had become a little bit distracted from the whole ‘Heir of Slytherin’ thing after discovering exactly what house-elves were, what they did, and the fact that as essentially unpaid, indentured workers, they were technically slaves.

“But they really like work!” Ron tried to calm the other girl down as she took book after book on house-elves out of the library in the following weeks. “If they didn’t work they’d- well, I’m not sure what they’d do, but nothing good! The worst thing you can do to a house elf is set it free!”

“Do _you_ have a house elf?” Hermione asked suspiciously, pausing in her search for tomes to look disapprovingly at Ron.

“What?” Ron shook his head, “No! We’re purebloods, but we don’t have any old properties or inherited wealth or indentured servants or- Hermione - I don’t know if you _missed_ Malfoy’s insults for the past year and a half about my family not having much money-”

Hermione thinned her lips. “Good,” she cut him off, “if you had one, I’m not sure we could be friends anymore.”

“F-friends?” Ron looked at Harry for help, who held her hands up in surrender, refusing to get involved. “Hermione, we’re _soulmates_ , that’s not just something you can turn off and on like a fellytone!”

“Plenty of soulmates refuse to see the other,” Hermione snapped, walking over to Madam Pince’s desk, her arms full. “These, please.” She said to the woman, who looked distrustfully at Hermione’s already bulging book bag, but eventually began writing them in the loan book.

“Yeah but- not _us._ Ron said desperately, “That’s really rare- and it only happens in some far flung tribes or something- and-”

Harry, although neither of her best friends knew about her soulmate other than that she refused to talk about him, felt her face heat up as Ron’s gaze unintentionally drifted over to her. “ _Classy_ , Ron.” She couldn’t keep the hurt out of her voice.

Ron’s ears went as red as his hair. “Harry-” he said, running a frantic hand through his hair, apparently torn about which girl he should try to explain himself to first, “I didn’t mean-”

“Yeah, I know,” Harry said with a sigh as Hermione picked up her new withdrawals, and flounced out of the library. Neither she or Ron had a death wish, so neither followed their muggleborn friend, knowing she needed time to calm down.

“How did this _happen?”_ Ron said hopelessly, looking miserably at the door Hermione had just stormed out of.

“History of Magic, Chamber of Secrets, long term planning to open the chamber, Dobby, house elves, magical slavery-” Harry ticked off the progression of events on her fingers.

“ _Dobby,_ ” Ron’s eyes narrowed, “if he didn’t sound so bloody miserable already, I’d give him a good talking to for being an abnormal house elf. They’re meant to _like_ work, Harry!”

_They’re meant to like work…_

“I think I know how we can figure out whose Dobby’s family is,” Harry said instead of responding to Ron’s question.

The ginger boy frowned. “How?”

“You said it yourself,” Harry said, a smile spreading across her face, “poor families _don’t have_ house elves. Neither do muggle-borns, or particularly young families-”

Ron’s eyes grew wide as he grasped her point. “Process of elimination,” he said, beginning to look excited himself now, “They can’t be from any family with only children who are firsties-”

“-because they wouldn’t be old enough. And they have to be the kind of people who wouldn’t think twice about abusing their house elves - to the point that they _hate_ work and go out of their way to trip them up.” Harry finished.

“Mate,” Ron said, the smile slipping off his face, “that means… we need to find a genealogy book.”

“Oh,” Harry’s eyes grew wide as she saw Madam Pince, still watching them distrustfully, “ _Oh no_.”

* * *

 

“I come bearing books?”

Hermione looked up from where she was sitting on her bed, surrounded by various texts, bushy hair sticking out in all different directions. She sighed when she saw Harry’s hopeful face.

“Fine,” she said grouchily, closing the book on her lap with a final sounding snap. “Come in.”

Harry did, and kicked her shoes off as she passed her bed. “How long have you been, er-” She gestured to the hoard Hermione had accumulated on her bed.

Her best friend shrugged, “About-” she checked her watch, “4 hours?”

“Oh. Wow.” Harry blinked. “Me and Ron had to take half hour breaks.”

Hermione looked around the room, apparently just noticing that it was now dark outside the tower. “Where is he? Ron?”

“I think he went to take a nap,” Harry says, “he was really tired. Percy even challenged him to a chess match, and he refused. And you know how much he likes beating Percy.”

“Yeah.” A small smile tugged at the corner of Hermione’s mouth.

“He’s really sorry,” Harry said, walking over to Hermione’s bed, and perching at the foot of the mattress, _The Sacred 28_ still in her hands, her finger poked inside to save her place. “He didn’t mean to talk down to you or anything, it just- it’s not something he even thinks about, you know? Like for us, you wouldn’t think to explain what a lightbulb is, because everyone knows what light bulbs are, right? Except Ron doesn’t. I tried to explain it to him and he almost went cross eyed. It just doesn’t make sense here, any more than slavery makes sense to us.”

Hermione looked rather uncomfortable. “I know,” she said, “I’ve thought about it, and asked some other people in the common room. None of them thought that house elves were being exploited, and they all said the same thing as Ron - that they all like to work. But surely, you can like to work whilst being paid? And Dobby, the one you met, he proves that they don’t all like it-”

“About Dobby,” Harry said, opening the book to the right page, “that’s what me and Ron were doing this afternoon. After you left. We thought we might be able to narrow down who the heir of Slytherin was by which family Dobby belonged to. Because he said to me that he’d known about the plot- assuming the plot is the opening of the Chamber of Secrets - for _months_. So we figured, that if we found out who Dobby’s family are-”

“-you figure out who the Heir is.” Hermione’s eyes shined. “That’s brilliant, Harry!”

Harry’s cheeks heated. “Yeah, well- there were a lot of genealogy books in the library. We asked Madame Pince which families were old enough to have house-elves, as well as which ones were the richest, and she pointed us to this - _The Sacred 28._ It’s an anonymously published list from the 1930s of the ‘truly pure’-” here, Harry put on a snotty voice that made Hermione giggle, “families. If Dobby’s family isn’t in here, I’ll eat my hat.”

Hermione, after getting over her laughter, frowned as she flicked through the book. “But Harry - this is an old book. A really old book. How can we be sure that the information here isn’t really outdated-”

Harry shakes her head, “In wizarding terms, it isn’t that old. You’re forgetting that the wizarding world hasn’t really moved past the 19th century. All the families in there still exist. We figured out that out of the 28 listed, only Abbott, Carrow, Flint, Greengrass, Longbottom, MacMillan, Malfoy, Nott, Parkinson, Prewett and Weasley have children currently in Hogwarts - and the Weasleys are actually half Prewett, and we’ve already established they don’t have house elves. So they’re out of the running, even if they hadn’t been Ron’s family and all in Gryffindor.” Harry showed Hermione the list she and Ron had made with all the eligible families on, with a line drawn through _Weasley_ and _Prewett,_ as well as all the families who didn’t have students in Hogwarts.

“I’d say Longbottom is out too,” Hermione said, looking keenly through the entries, “Neville is not a blood supremacist, and even if he were-”

Between the two girls, an understanding passed that even if Neville were the kind to be obsessed with blood purity, he probably didn’t have the magical might to open the Chamber of Secrets and control Slytherin’s Monster. Neither of them said it, and Hermione drew a line through _Longbottom._

“What about the others?” Hermione asked, studying the list.

“Hannah Abbott is in our year, a Puff-”

“No,” Hermione said frankly, “not Hannah. She’s the one with the blonde plaits, yeah?” At Harry nod, she doubled down. “She’s sweet. And she and Neville are soulmates. If he’s off, she’s off.”

Harry squirmed. Hermione was assuming an awful lot about the strength of the soul bond - just because Neville was about as vicious as a marshmallow, didn’t mean his soulmate was the same. She knew that well enough - even though her soulmate was apparently Lord Voldemort, it did not mean she was destined to become a dark witch. She had already had that particular panic pretty much immediately after she found out about her soulmate’s identity, and had spent a lot of her time at the Durlsey’s reading through History textbooks looking for examples of soulmates that were different in their magic and morals. And there were _hundreds_ of examples. Even one of her own family members, a great-uncle called Charlus Potter, who had been a light wizard, had been soulbonded to Dorea Black, a dark witch. So just because Neville was off the hook, it didn’t mean Hannah Abbott was.

Although, she had to admit, Hannah Abbott _was_ sweet - and one of her best friends, Finch-Fletchly, was a muggleborn. And a Hufflepuff, for that matter - Harry couldn’t imagine Slytherin’s heir being put in Hufflepuff. Slytherin would, of course, be the obvious choice, Ravenclaw a second if they wanted to fly under the radar - maybe even Gryffindor, if they were feeling rebellious. But Hufflepuff? Remembering the way Draco Malfoy had talked about Hufflepuff when she first met him in Madam Malkin’s, she felt pretty sure any puffs could be crossed off.

“Okay,” she said, and dutifully crossed _Abbott_ off the list. The next name on the list was _Carrow_.

“I don’t know anyone by the name of Carrow…” Hermione said thoughtfully.

“Ron said they’re in the year above,” Harry remembered, “two of them. Twin girls. Slytherin. They’d have the time to find it, especially if they split up to look. Although… the writing on the wall said the _heir_ of Slytherin, not the _heirs.”_

“Could be a misdirection,” Hermione said, tapping her quill tip against her lip. Harry nodded in agreement. Hermione put a _?_ by _Carrow._

“I know Flint,” Harry said darkly, “he’s the Slytherin Quidditch captain. Nasty piece of work.”

Hermione clearly remembered him too, from the confrontation earlier in the year when Flint had been easily bribed by Malfoy to let him onto the team, and how he’d defended the blond boy from Fred and George’s fists - but not from Harry’s bony knee. She put a _?_ next to Flint as well.

“Who’s next?” Hermione asked.

“Greengrass. There are two of them as well, but not twins. You know Daphne Greengrass - the one with the short blonde bob. She looks like she’s always smelled something really bad.” Hermione frowned, before her brow cleared.

“Yeah. Yeah, I know Daphne. There’s two of them, did you say?”

“Yes,” Harry said, “her sister's a firstie. Astoria, I think her name was, although don’t take my word for that. I was half mad with hunger at the sorting.”

“She’s in Slytherin with her sister?” Hermione asked, quill poised. Harry nodded, and Hermione put a _?_ next to Greengrass as well.

“MacMillan-”

“Absolutely not.” Hermione said firmly. Harry looked up, eyes wide.

“Why not?”

“Because the MacMillans are famously descendants of Helga Hufflepuff,” Hermione said, “I read it in-”

“ _Hogwarts: A History_?” Harry teased.

Hermione rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Ernie’s out.”

Harry looked down at the remaining three names on the list that hadn’t been crossed out or question marked. “Malfoy, Nott and Parkinson,” she said with a grimace, “all purebloods, all only children, all Slytherins, all blood purists.”

Without hesitation, Hermione put a _?_ next to each of the names. “So that leaves us with… Carrow, Flint, Greengrass, Malfoy, Nott and Parkinson.”

“Only the Carrows and Flint aren’t in our year,” Harry notices.

“That’s a good thing,” Hermione tells her, “we have classes with Greengrass, Malfoy, Nott and Parkinson. We can keep an eye on them, see if they’re doing anything… suspicious.”

Harry nods. “I wish we’d been able to narrow it down more,” she groans.

“We have six families,” Hermione reminds her, “that’s better than twenty eight.”

* * *

 

Unexpectedly, it’s Ron who figures out how to narrow down the list further. He looks at the six names, and picks out each of the eight members at the Slytherin table. Astoria Greengrass was chatting with a fellow firstie, her sister sitting next to her, obviously keeping an eye on her. Malfoy and Parkinson were in conversation with Adrian Pucey and Marcus Flint, and Nott was keeping to himself. The Carrow twins were further up the table still, eerily identical in their matching robes, pin straight hair styles and mirrored movements.

“You were saying about starting a society? For the house elves?” He says to Hermione, who frowns at the subject change.

“Yes, but I’m still not happy with the way you just accept-”

“Perfect,” Ron said, “you sound perfect. Come with me.” Without any warning, he stood up, and half dragged Hermione to her feet. Harry watched them go with wide eyes, and started to rise as well. “Not you,” Ron told her, “you need to stay here. It’s too suspicious if you go.”

“Go where?!” Hermione asked, eyes flashing.

“To the Slytherin table of course,” Ron said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

“To the-” Hermione blustered, “Ron, I’m a muggleborn and you’re a blood traitor! Why would we be going over there? We have just as little reason to go over there as Harry-”

“Not so,” Ron said, and he began walking again, giving no explanation. Hermione stared after him, mouth hanging open, before she reluctantly caught up to him as speedily as she could. Harry was still staring as she watched the two of them cross the Great Hall, her piece of toast forgotten.

“Where is Ronniekins going?” Fred asked, his voice aghast as he followed Harry’s gaze.

“I- I think-” Harry’s words got stuck in her throat.

“How are we going to explain his premature death to Mum?” George chimed in, his own expression a mask of horror matching his brother’s. “Where is bloody Percy at times when he could actually be a help-”

Harry, Fred and George held their breaths as Ron and Hermione stopped in front of where Hestia and Flora Carrow were eating. The two girls stopped moving in perfect synchronization then - the twin on the left, Harry had no idea which, put down her croissant to respond to whatever Ron and Hermione said whilst her sister carried on nibbling her pastry as if nothing was happening.

“Flora Carrow can cast a mean stinging hex,” George said, sounding actually worried now as the left twin’s smile grew and grew, showing off each and every one of her gleaming white teeth. Abruptly, Ron and Hermione walked away from the twins, the left girl laughing. The twins let out a breath of relief at their brother managing to leave the conversation without being hexed.

This time, it seemed Hermione was the one leading Ron - but they weren’t turning around. Instead, they were just moving down the table, before stopping next to the Greengrass sisters. Daphne Greengrass seemed more confused than anything to see the two of them, but Astoria beamed up at them brightly without any guile. Then she too began frowning, and Ron and Hermione beat a hasty retreat.

Nott was their next target - but he was expecting them after their talks with the Carrows and Greengrasses. He spoke quickly, looking around as if afraid people would see him talking to Gryffindors, or worse, a muggleborn and a blood traitor. Either way, Ron nodded at him in an oddly formal way, and moved on to the final four, who were, for better or for worse, sitting in a large cluster. For a moment Harry wondered why Flint, a sixth year, was sitting next to Malfoy, a second year, before realising they were probably talking about Quidditch. That’d be why Pucey was involved as well. Parkinson was probably only there as Malfoy’s shadow.

Malfoy’s head turned unexpectedly, and he looked right at Harry across the hall as Ron and Hermione stopped in front of the group. Harry’s eyes snapped down to her plate, although Fred and George showed no such compulsion. Instead, they waved cheerily, and Malfoy rolled his eyes before drawling something to Ron that made him straighten and lift his chin. Pucey stood up from his seat, and began to advance after a moment, and Hermione raised her hands - _we come in peace._ “That’s enough,” Harry muttered to herself, “stop it. Stop it now.”

But they didn’t. Pansy Parkinson tossed her hair, and Blaise Zabini leaned down the table from a few seats away, said something that made Hermione begin explaining something with her hands enthusiastically. Malfoy laughed loudly, loud enough to carry across the hall, and turned away from Ron and Hermione. Flint followed the younger boy’s example. Hermione grabbed Ron’s hand and pulled him away, and the two made their way back to the Gryffindor table.

“Ron,” Fred said, sounding uncharacteristically serious as his brother dropped back down in his seat, red-faced, “I don’t say this lightly… but that was _stupid_.”

Ron grunted, and shoved a piece of toast in his mouth to avoid answering. Unlike her soulmate, Hermione was preening happily. It seemed like a strange inverse of the beginning of their journey, where Ron had been confident and Hermione confused and cross. “What happened?” Harry blurted, “How did you not get jinxed? What did you say? What did you do?”

Instead of immediately answering, Hermione took the list from the centre of the table, and crossed out _Carrow, Nott_ and _Greengrass._ Harry gaped at her certainty. Now only _Parkinson_ , _Malfoy_ and _Flint_ remained. “Ron was brilliant,” she gushed, beaming at the still pink boy. The boy in question shrugged noncommittally, mouth full of food.

“What did you do?” Harry asked again.

“Ron said we were doing research on house elves conditions,” she explained quickly, “said we were looking at how they were treated, whether they owned them, made assumptions about people who owned them, et cetera. The twins were quite cagey at first, but Ron managed to imply that if they didn’t give him an answer, he’d be forced to assume they didn’t have any elves. One of them got rather cross at that, even though she kept on smiling, and said of _course_ they had elves - they had three, all of which had been with the family for decades - Pinky, Freise and Jitter. And then she - a little less subtly - implied that if we didn’t leave her alone, she’d- well-” Hermione blushed at the memory of exactly what threat Flora Carrow had made that she clearly didn’t think should be repeated.

Ron shivered at the memory, and George reached across to pat his younger brother’s hand in understanding. “I know,” he said frankly, “she’s scary.”

“Anyway, by then I’d caught on, and Ron wasn’t feeling too good about it anymore, so I took the Greengrasses - Daphne didn’t seem to know what to say to us. I’m not sure she’s ever talked to a muggleborn before. But Astoria seemed really interested in the muggle world and how I found the wizarding world, and I said about how the house elves seemed to be exploited to me. She got really sad at that, and said she wished people were kinder to other living beings. Cute girl, actually. Either way, she said they hadn’t had house elves for years - her mother didn’t approve of them. Wanted to teach the girls the value of hard work, and then Daphne made her be quiet. Either way, they’re out too.”

“Nott was alrigh’,” Ron mumbled through his mouthful, “obviously heard us talking to Greengrass. Said real quiet like that he couldn’t afford to be seen talking to us, but that his family’s last house elf had died two years ago or something, and had been- well, _mounted_ on the wall for good service or something. Wanted us gone as quick as possible.”

“Malfoy and Parkinson were _awful,”_ Hermione said with feeling, “they were so rude from the start. Flint accused us of trying to spy on their quidditch meeting, so I pointed out if we were spying, we wouldn’t have come right up to them. Pucey didn’t seem to like that, and got up to- well, I’m not sure what he was going to do, but Parkinson couldn’t resist mocking us. Ron managed to ask if she had a house-elf, and she said of course she did, and it wasn’t any of our business to ask about her property.

“Zabini seemed pretty interested in the idea of protecting house-elf rights, actually, but he admitted he barely saw any because his mother lives in Italy with three, and he only goes back for four weeks in summer, the other half of the holidays with his dad’s family who don’t have any - ahem. Anyway, back to the topic in hand- Pucey said he didn’t have one, because they thought it was just random questioning, so if a few of them answered we’d go away.  But Flint laughed and said that he thought Pucey’s family had more money than that. Bragged about having two, and Malfoy joined in at that point, saying his family had had house-elves in his house for centuries. That pissed Pucey off, and he started saying- well, at least he wasn’t a mud-”

Ron made a disgusted sound in the back of his throat at the unfinished slur. “Disgusting,” he said, “the lot of them.”

“Anyway, he stopped when he saw Ron’s face. Malfoy had gone back to ignoring us, though he seemed pretty mad at Pucey, and it wouldn’t do to start anything, so I got Ron away-”

“You two,” Harry said, with feeling, “are brilliant.”

“Yeah,” Hermione said looking fondly over at Ron, “I guess we are. Plus! Now we’re starting a society for the protection of house-elves-”

“Wha?” Ron said, turning to look at Hermione, shocked. "That was an excuse, Hermione!"

Hermione grinned triumphantly. “You went round with me talking about it. Everyone saw you. Your plan was to make it look like you were accompanying me because of our bond, yeah, as an unwilling party? It was a good plan. Nobody questioned us. But… they would if we stopped. We’re in this together now, soulmate, and we can make similar rounds at the Gryffindor, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw tables now that the hard part is done-”

Ron groaned. “It was a tactic!”

“It worked,” Hermione said happily, “come on, they probably all thought you were only there because you didn’t want your soulmate going to the big bad Slytherin table by herself. It won't affect your rep.” She bit into her toasted soldiers looking very pleased with herself.

Blood ran from Ron’s face as he realised that was exactly what it looked like. “That’s- I mean- if I do this, am I forgiven for not telling you about house-elves in the first place?”

“Yes,” Hermione said magnanimously, with an angelic smile.

Ron groaned, knowing he was trapped.

* * *

 

By the time the Gryffindor-Slytherin quidditch match rolled around, Hermione and a reluctant Ron had been canvassing the entire Hogwarts populace - the amount of half-bloods and purebloods who had house elves were actually pretty even, and unsurprisingly none of the muggleborns had any idea what house elves were, let alone owning any. A lot of them were quite shocked when they were told that the food they’d been eating at Hogwarts had been made by tiny servants who didn’t get paid. A lot of them had signed up to S.P.E.W. - The Society for the Protection of Elvish Welfare - immediately after being informed.

Harry, being Hermione and Ron’s eternal third wheel, had been the first name on the sign up sheet, as was her duty as their best mate. The meetings were held in one of the empty classrooms on the fourth floor, which Hermione had been using to educate people about the position of house-elves as indentured, unpaid labour who could not leave their families if they so desired, and the way that they were meant to ‘punish’ themselves. Ron, after a few weeks, started to get quite into the hows and whys of the matter with the muggleborns, explaining about brownies and gnomes and the interspecies breeding that had been happening for thousands of years in order to create house-elves.

Hermione and Ron’s pet project, thankfully, didn’t distract them from trying to narrow down who Dobby’s family was. But after weeks of fruitlessly following Flint (who seemed to spend all of his time in the Slytherin Common Room or on the Quidditch Pitch), Parkinson (who seemed to spend all of her time following Malfoy around, but of her own free will, unlike the three of them) and Malfoy, (who spent most of his time strutting around the castle insulting people and telling Crabbe and Goyle what to do), they were forced to conclude that nothing was happening. As there hadn’t been another attack, Harry was privately hopeful that was the end of it, and that that Lavender had been right about the whole thing being a bad joke.

Harry rose early on Saturday morning, and joined the rest of the team at the Gryffindor table for a proper pre-game breakfast and tactics discussion. Wood put up a silencing charm around them once the seven team members were sitting down - when Katie questioned where he learned it, he said he’d researched it specifically so that they couldn’t be spied on by the other teams. Harry thought, not for the first time, that Wood really needed to get a life outside of Quidditch.

“They may have faster brooms,” Wood said urgently, speaking like a man who hadn’t slept a wink all night, “but we are the better team. As Harry said - the brooms can’t score goals for them, hit the bludgers for them, catch the snitch for them! We’ve been training harder than ever, in all weathers, and I know you will not let me or Gryffindor down.” Harry’s gut churned with nervousness as the clock struck quarter to eleven. “We can do this,” Wood told them, meeting each of their eyes firmly, “I know we can. Failure is not an option. Now let’s go show those little shits how a real team plays Quidditch.”

With those encouraging words, Wood took down the privacy spell and led the way to the locker rooms. _Failure is not an option,_ Harry reminded herself as trooped after him, catching Ron and Hermione’s encouraging gazes as she looked back. To her amusement, she saw they were both wearing S.P.E.W. badges on their Gryffindor scarves. _Failure is not an option._

Harry forgot all her nerves as she rose into the air with Madam Hooch’s whistle. Even after all the endless, grinding practices, the feeling made her happier, no matter how black her mood. The wind in her hair, the touch of the air against her bare cheeks-

"All right there, Scarhead?" yelled Malfoy, shooting underneath her as though to show off the speed of his broom, ruining the perfect moment.

Harry went to make a vomiting motion at him, deciding two could play at that game, but didn’t have the chance - a bludger rushed towards her and she was forced to quickly swerve out of it’s path. She felt her braid flutter with how close it had come to hitting her.

"Close one, Harry!" said George, streaking past her with his club in his hand, ready to knock the Bludger back toward a Slytherin. Harry saw George give the Bludger a powerful whack in the direction of Adrian Pucey, but the Bludger changed direction in midair and shot straight for Harry again.

Shocked, Harry barely managed to dive in time to avoid it. She locked eyes with George, who looked as confused as she felt in that split second, before he once again walloped it with his club, this time towards Malfoy. But the ball barely made it four metres before it looped back in midair, like a boomerang, and again headed straight for Harry.

Harry put on a burst of speed and zoomed toward the other end of the pitch. She could hear the Bludger whistling along behind her. _What was going on?_ Bludgers never concentrated on one player like this; it was their job to try and unseat as many people as possible… she had a nasty feeling of deja vu, feeling this situation was far too close to comfort to when Quirrell had jinxed her broom. But she thought that the balls were wrapped in powerful protections, meant to avoid tampering? It shouldn’t be possible.

But this was her life, after all, where mass murderers returned from the dead, the platform closed for the first time in history on her, and now a bludger was trying to murder her.

Fred Weasley was waiting for the Bludger at the other end. Harry ducked as Fred swung at the Bludger with all his might; the Bludger was knocked off course.

"Gotcha!" Fred yelled with a grin, but he was wrong; as though it was magnetically attracted to Harry, the Bludger pelted after her once more and Harry was forced to fly off at full speed.

 _Failure is not an option,_ Wood’s words echoed in Harry’s mind. Dying was not an option either, and Harry felt that she was going to focus more on avoiding the bludger than on searching for the snitch. She wasn’t able to even focus on what was going on in the rest of the game, relying on Lee Jordan’s commentary: “Slytherin lead, sixty points to zero.”

The Nimbus Two Thousand and Ones were clearly doing their jobs; as was the homicidal bludger. Harry couldn’t escape it, and she was starting to get dangerously fatigued. If this carried on, she wouldn’t be able to avoid it forever.

She didn’t think that even magic would save her from a crushed skull.

Fred and George were now flying so close to her on either side that Harry couldn’t see anything at all except their flailing arms. The twins were clearly feeling the same tiredness that was beginning to attack Harry, and Fred motioned to Wood for a timeout. Thankfully, the captain got the message, and Hooch blew her whistle. Harry, Fred and George hurtled to the ground, still avoiding the bludger. Miraculously, once her feet hit solid ground, the bludger blurred away.

“What's going on?" said Wood as the Gryffindor team huddled together, while Slytherins in the crowd jeered. "We're being flattened. Fred, George, where were you when that Bludger stopped Angelina scoring?"

“We were twenty feet above her, trying to stop the tampered bludger murdering Harry!” George snapped back, angrily. Wood’s eyes went wide.

“Tampered with? Are you sure?”

“Certain.” Fred backed up his brother. “It’s been fixed. It won’t leave Harry alone. The Slytherins must have done something to it.”

Wood’s face was overcome with a terrible scowl. “Why those lowlife, cheating-”

“Mr Wood?” Madam Hooch had come out of nowhere, and was fixing the captain with a stern look. “Why did you motion for time out?”

Wood’s eyes darted from Harry’s, to Fred’s, to George’s. Each of them was absolutely certain. He straightened, and turning to the flying professor. “One of the bludgers has been tampered with, Madam Hooch,” he said, fighting to be heard over the jeers of the Slytherin crowd, “it’s fixed on our seeker. It could kill her.”

Madam Hooch turned to Harry. “The balls have all been locked away in my office before the game. Are you absolutely sure, Miss Potter?”

“Very sure,” Harry said. “It only stopped when I got onto the ground.”

Hooch pursed her lips. “Only one of the bludgers, you said?”

Harry nodded.

“Get on your broom, Miss Potter,” Hooch said frankly. “Nobody else, just you. Hover two feet above the ground. We’ll wait for this rogue bludger to come, and if it comes, we can disable it.”

Swallowing hard, Harry built up her courage and swung her leg over the broom.

“Shouldn’t me and George go up too?” Fred said anxiously as Harry prepared to lift off. Madam Hooch fixed him with a cold stare.

“I am perfectly capable of stopping a bludger,” she said crisply.

Harry took a deep breath, and pushed off. For a brief moment, nothing happened, and Madam Hooch looked very, very cross indeed - Harry wondered what she would do to Wood if she thought he was lying to get the Slytherins in trouble, nothing good, she would bet - and then, a black ball came careening through the air, and Harry cried out a warning. Hooch turned, and her eyes widened as she saw the bludger coming. She raised her wand.

“Finite incantatem!”

The bludger slowly began to bend around in the air, and went soaring back to high in the sky, where it came from. Hooch dusted off her robes. Harry released a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding. She turned back to the Gryffindor team.

“I don’t know how this happened, but rest assured, I will get to the bottom of it, and the perpetrators-”

“ _Harry!"_  The shriek came from the stands, and Harry’s head snapped round to see Hermione, running across the field, pointing. Too slow, Harry looked up, and saw the bludger - the same bludger from before, she was sure of it - hurtling back towards her again. She tried to dodge, but wasn’t fast enough - the bludger connected with her elbow, and Harry felt her arm break. It had happened once before, when she was little and Dudley had pushed her down the stairs. It hurt more this time, somehow.

There was a bang, and as she slid off the broom to the thankfully nearby ground, arms reached out to catch her. Something exploded above her. She whimpered as hands jostled her arm. The world went dark for a moment, and Harry didn’t feel so much as like she’d fainted, as that she’d suddenly lost her eyesight, and her ears were crackling like somebody left the TV on standby. “Mione?” She cried out blindly. She heard a clicking sound she was unfortunately familiar with, and grimaced, but let it go, not trusting herself to speak as the waves of pain washed over her.

“I’m here, I’m here,” Hermione said, and she sounded like she was on the edge of tears. “Oh Harry - those cheaters - they could have _killed_ you-”

The background noise was even more obvious as Harry had lost her eyesight. She thought she could hear Madam Hooch ranting - _never would have thought it of you, Flint, of all the dangerous and stupid things to do... won’t hesitate to have you all banned… you’ll forfeit the match…_

“I’m getting used to it,” Harry croaked, before hissing with pain as her elbow painfully jarred on the ground. “My arm- my arm’s broken-”

“You’ll be okay - you’re going to be levitated to the hospital wing, you’ll be fine-”

At the word ‘levitate’, Harry flinches, and remembers. “The bludger- did it hit anyone else? Where is it?”

A new voice - Ron’s. “Hermione blew it up. It was awesome.”

“Wicked,” Harry managed to say with a faint grin, before an invisible force picked her up in the air, and she promptly lost consciousness.

* * *

 

Waking up in the hospital wing is something Harry has done a lot in her short time at Hogwarts, but it never feels any better. For a second, she’s confused about why exactly she’s in the hospital wing, but the events of the Quidditch match quickly come flooding back, especially when she’s still wearing her muddy gear. It’s dark, the only light in the ward coming from the slivers of moonlight coming in through the curtains. She groans as she tries to sit up - her head pounds, and her arm aches, but the skin is unblemished, clean, and the bone feels to be in one piece. She wonders if Pomfrey had to sedate her, or if she just really needed to rest. Either way, she feels better for it.

She peers at the clock on her bedside table - in the dark, it’s not very easy to make out the hands, but she gets there - it’s one in the morning. There’s no way she’s getting back to Gryffindor tower until the morning at least. Resigned to her fate, she flops onto her back. And onto something that is not her mattress.

Harry cannot help the sharp cry that escapes her as she whirls, but her mouth hangs open when she sees exactly what - or rather, who - she had laid down on. Dobby, the house elf she hadn’t been sure she’d ever see again, was staring at her with his large tennis ball eyes. “Harriet Potter came back to school,” he said miserably, and a tear trekked down his pointed nose.

“Dobby- what are you doing here?” Harry asked, her shock not quite stopping her from asking the first question on her mind, “And- _how?_  How did you come here? You can’t apparate into-” Harry’s mind caught up with her mouth. House elves could do a lot of things that wizards couldn’t. That was one of the first things Hermione had lectured on during the S.P.E.W. meetings.

“Dobby warned and warned Harriet Potter.” Dobby continued in a sorrowful tone, “Ah miss, why didn't you heed Dobby? Why didn't Harriet Potter go back home when she missed the train?"

“How did you know-” A sudden thought came to Harry, and her eyes widened. “ _You?_ You closed the barrier? Half of Hogwarts was stuck in King’s Cross!”

Dobby looked down, and his expression strongly resembled that of a kicked puppy. Harry had to stop herself comforting him. “Indeed, miss, Dobby closed the barrier,” the house elf said, “but only to keep Harriet Potter safe. Dobby had to iron his hands afterward-”

Harry stared down at the little elf’s heavily bandaged hands, and found herself speechless. “-but Dobby didn’t care! Dobby knew what he was doing was right! Dobby thought Harriet Potter was safe, but Dobby didn’t think, didn’t dream that Harriet Potter would _still_ come to school-”

“Dobby you-” Harry would have ran her hand through her hair if it wasn’t still feeling a little vulnerable, “you caused a _huge_ incident! Hundreds of muggles had to be obliviated! I know-” she began as Dobby began to cry loudly, “I know you didn’t _mean_ to do that, but it could have broken the Statute of Secrecy!”

“Dobby was so shocked when he heard Harriet Potter was back at Hogwarts,” Dobby continued, as if he couldn’t stop himself from telling her everything, “he let his master's dinner burn! Such a flogging Dobby never had, miss..."

Harry flinched at the image of anyone beating such a vulnerable creature like Dobby. All the anger went out of her in a rush, and she found herself collapsing back against the cushions.

“Dobby- I- I can’t pretend not to be angry. But your master - your family - they shouldn’t treat you like that. It’s wrong, Dobby. You have _rights._ ”

Dobby shook his head, downcast. “No, Harriet Potter, miss. Dobby has no rights. Dobby is vermin. Less than vermin. Dobby’s master never lets him forget.” He played awkwardly with his pillowcase robe.

A feeling of overwhelming helplessness, unlike any Harry had known before, came over her. Even when she hadn’t been Harriet Potter, the Girl-Who-Lived, when she had just been Harry, the freakish orphan girl, she had never had to watch anybody else suffer needlessly. She had taken it all upon herself, and managed just fine. But Dobby… Dobby did not deserve this. And she could do nothing to stop it.

“Can’t you leave?” She half-begged, “Work for another family? Surely there must be a way for you to leave that place, even if you can’t be free-”

“Dobby’s master would have to give him clothes, miss Harriet Potter,” Dobby said sadly, and Harry felt tears rising in her eyes at the hopelessness in his voice,“and he never will. His family makes sure not to give him so much as a sock, or Dobby would be free.”

“Oh, Dobby,” Harry said, and without thinking, she wrapped her arms around the little elf and pulled him close to her. He let out a small sigh of contentment.

“Miss Harriet Potter would not hold Dobby like this,” he whispered, breaking the silence, “she would not comfort him if she knew…”

Harry bit her lip, already guessing what was coming next.

“You fixed the bludger, didn’t you?” She said softly to Dobby, who let out a loud wail at her words. He tried to pull away, but she held him fast.

“Dobby just wanted to have Harriet Potter sent home!” He sobbed. “But how did the Great Harriet Potter _know-”_

“Your magic,” Harry said, “it was too strong for any wizard to have done it. If it had been the Slytherins, the tampering would have stopped when Madam Hooch cast _finite incantatem_. But it didn’t, because house-elf magic is different, isn’t it?”

Dobby nodded. “House-elf magic is weaker than wizard magic in some ways,” the elf said, “but in other ways… it is strong.”

“Dobby, I’m not angry,” Harry said, and found it to be true. “I know your intentions were good. But I could have _died_ , Dobby, and whatever is here, in the school? That hasn’t killed me yet. I need you to promise me that you won’t try and get me sent home again.”

The elf pulled away from Harry’s embrace, and this time she let him. There were dried tears on his cheeks, and his lip was wobbling, but he seemed stronger than before. “Dobby promises Miss Harriet Potter,” the little elf whispered.

Harry smiled weakly. “Thank you Dobby.”

The elf looked around the silent hospital ward. “Dobby needs to go, before his master notices he is gone, but Harriet Potter needs to know- the danger is still here, still lurking-”

“Wait!” Harry hissed, “Before you go- Dobby, can you tell me something?” Her heart was beating very fast in her chest, and she knew she only had one shot at this.

“Dobby will try, miss Harriet Potter.”

“Okay,” Harry said, licking her lips, “okay. Your family - are they the Malfoys?”

Dobby’s eyes went as round as saucers, and he disappeared in a blink of an eye. But that was all the answer Harry needed.

She collapsed back onto the bed, exhausted from holding her body up for so long. She’d thought about it, long and hard, ever since they had narrowed down the list to Parkinson, Malfoy and Flint - Parkinson was a follower, not a leader. Flint was too old to have only just opened the chamber, and quite frankly, didn’t strike Harry as particularly bright. And Malfoy… he fit. She had barely noticed him last year, except for his various spats with Ron, but this year… he was more brazen with his prejudices, more confident.

Like he knew something was coming.

Harry had only met Lucius Malfoy the once, but she hadn’t liked what she’d seen. She liked him even less now.

She couldn’t have told you how long she lay there, thinking about Dobby and the Malfoys and the Chamber of Secrets; something about the puzzle didn’t seem to fit, but she couldn’t figure out what. Her ears suddenly picked up a conversation out of the silence, growing closer, and on instinct she scrambled under her covers, which had been thrown off when Dobby had appeared on her bed. She breathed evenly, and closed her eyes, trying to be as still as she could.

The door clicked open. Slowly, she dared open her eyes a crack. Dumbledore was backing into the hospital wing, wearing a long woolly dressing gown and a nightcap. He was carrying one end of what looked like a statue. Professor McGonagall, in similar night time attire, appeared a second later, carrying its feet. Together, they heaved it onto an empty bed.

"Get Madam Pomfrey," whispered Dumbledore, probably trying not to wake Harry, and Professor McGonagall hurried past the end of Harry's bed out of sight. She heard urgent voices, and then Professor McGonagall swept back into view, closely followed by Madam Pomfrey, who was pulling a cardigan on over her nightdress. She heard a sharp intake of breath, and resisted the compulsion to crane her neck up to see. She had to be asleep.

"What happened?" Madam Pomfrey whispered to Dumbledore, bending over the statue on the bed.

"Another attack," said Dumbledore gravely. "A student this time. I found him on the stairs."

"There was a bunch of grapes next to him," said Professor McGonagall. "We think he was trying to sneak up here to visit Potter."

A hand clenched hard around Harry’s heart. _Not Ron!_ She closed her eyes and almost prayed for the first time in her life. She had never been taken to the singular, Christmas Eve service the Dursleys attended each year. She was left with Mrs Figg, and her cats, and watched late night telly instead, and ate mince pies.

Unable to resist, Harry slowly raised her head, in such a way it could be taken as just moving in her sleep. A ray of moonlight fell on the stiff body’s face, and despite herself, she felt herself breathe a sigh of relief.

It was Colin Creevey. His eyes were wide and his hands were stuck up in front of him, holding his camera. It wasn’t Ron. But she was being stupid - it wouldn’t be Ron. Ron was a pureblood - both his mother and father’s families were part of the Sacred 28. But Colin… Colin had been a muggleborn. Colin was exactly the sort of person that the Heir of Slytherin would target. Even if he had been annoying, Harry hadn't wanted him _petrified_.

"Petrified?" whispered Madam Pomfrey.

"Yes," said Professor McGonagall. "But I shudder to think... If Albus hadn't been on the way downstairs for hot chocolate - who knows what might have-"

The three of them stared down at Colin. Then Dumbledore leaned forward and wrenched the camera out of Colin's rigid grip.

"You don't think he managed to get a picture of his attacker?" said Professor McGonagall tentatively.

Dumbledore didn't answer. He opened the back of the camera.

"Good gracious!" said Madam Pomfrey.

A jet of steam had hissed out of the camera. Harry, three beds away, caught the acrid smell of burnt plastic.

"Melted," said Madam Pomfrey wonderingly. "All melted..."

"What does this mean, Albus?" Professor McGonagall asked urgently.

"It means," said Dumbledore, "that the Chamber of Secrets is indeed open again."

 _Again?_ Harry’s mind raced at revelation. This had happened before? When? What had happened before.

Oblivious to Harry’s racing thoughts, Madam Pomfrey clapped a hand to her mouth. Professor McGonagall stared at Dumbledore, her face grey.

"But, Albus... surely... who?"

"The question is not _who_ ," said Dumbledore, his eyes on Colin. "The question is, _how_..." And from what Harry could see of Professor McGonagall's shadowy face, she didn't understand this any better than Harry did.

* * *

 

“But don’t you _see_ ,” Harry said to Ron and Hermione after she had been released from the hospital wing, no worse for wear after the Quidditch match than before, “it all fits! Dumbledore said he already knew who the Heir of Slytherin is - if it’s been opened before, it was Lucius Malfoy the first time, Draco the second! Lucius obviously told his son about the chamber over the break and planned with him how to open it and control the monster, and Dobby overheard them planning! _That’s_ how he knew to warn me!”

“And poor Colin…” Hermione said with a sniff.

“You heard Malfoy as well as I did,” Ron jumped in now, growing excited as Harry told them her theory, “when Mrs Norris’ body was found. _You’ll be next, mudbloods._ Harry’s right, it fits! And we know that they’re assholes-”

“Ron!” Hermione glared at him.

“They _are._ You heard what they did to Dobby!”

Hermione’s face went hard at the reminder. “Right,” she said, and took a breath, “right.” She turned to Harry, her eyes flinty. “I say we nail the bastards.”

* * *

 

Now able to focus solely on following Malfoy around, the three of them were vigilant to never lose sight of him, from when he entered the Great Hall for breakfast, to when he went into the Slytherin Quarters - which turned out to be in the Dungeons, who knew - to sleep.  

The problem was… he wasn’t _doing_ anything.

“He knows,” Ron said bleakly, “he has to know. Nothing since Colin was attacked.”

“Maybe we’re too close to this,” Harry said, rubbing her eyes. “There’s something obvious we’re missing, I just know it.”

“Maybe-” Hermione’s eyes lit up, and Harriet could see the proverbial lightbulb going on over her head, “he’s waiting for an opportunity, when people are distracted. Colin was attacked at night, when everyone was in bed. He’s going to want to pick someone off, when they’re isolated.”

“Yeah, but, we can’t watch the Slytherin common room all the time,” Ron said. “Even Crabbe and Goyle would catch on then.”

“We don’t need to,” Hermione said, and nodded towards a flyer Harry hadn’t noticed before.

**DUELLING CLUB!**

**First meeting tonight at 8pm in the Great Hall**

**ALL WELCOME**

“That’s what he’s waiting for,” Hermione continued, “it has to be.”

“Everyone would be in the Great Hall,” Harry said, “but wouldn’t his absence be obvious?”

Ron shrugged. “Either way - we follow him. He goes to the club, we know he’s not going to attack anyone. He doesn’t, and someone gets petrified, we can tell Dumbledore that it’s him.”

“It can’t be that easy,” Harry said, more to herself than to the other two, but she had to admit it was a pretty good plan. Whatever happened, at least they’d be further along than they currently were.

* * *

 

That evening, Harry couldn’t help the disappointment that twisted in her gut when she saw Malfoy’s trademark white-blonde hair in the Great Hall, alongside a raised platform that Harry assumed was a duelling stage. “Now what?” She said to Hermione under her breath.

“We keep an eye on him,” her friend whispered back, “he might try to slip out. We won’t let him.”

Ron smiled grimly, and seemed determined not to take his eyes off the Slytherin boy.

At a normal volume, Hermione began to chat to Harry, and their conversation quickly turned towards the duelling club, and who exactly would be leading it. “I heard Flitwick was a duelling champion when he was younger - I bet he’d be brilliant. And Dumbledore obviously defeated Gellert Grindelwald in a duel, but I’m not sure he’d do something like this, he's such a busy man..."

“Anyone would be fine,” Harry said, “as long as it’s not-”

She had jinxed it, and a groan slipped out of her mouth as she saw Lockhart mounting the stage, hair perfectly waved, smile as blinding as car headlights. Behind him, Snape, dressed in his normal black robes looked a little like his shadow. His much, much angrier shadow.

Lockhart waved an arm for silence, which he eventually got after Snape stared down those still talking with a death glare, and called "Gather round, gather round! Can everyone see me? Can you all hear me? Excellent! Now, Professor Dumbledore has granted me permission to start this little dueling club, to train you all in case you ever need to defend yourselves as I myself have done on countless occasions - for full details, see my published works.”

“ _See my published works_ ,” Ron echoed snootily, in an uncanny impression of Lockhart’s smug tone.

Oblivious to Ron’s mockery, Lockhart carried on. "Let me introduce my assistant, Professor Snape," said Lockhart, flashing a wide smile.

“Oh, he’s not going to like that,” Harry breathed, her eyes - like everyone else in the room’s, save Lockhart’s, fixed on Snape - and she could swear the temperature in the Great Hall dropped a few degrees as Snape’s expression became downright homicidal. As Lockhart had his back to him, Harry could understand that he couldn’t see it, but how couldn’t he _feel_ it? Harry had been under that very same gaze many times, and each had been a singularly unpleasant experience.

"He tells me he knows a _tiny_ little bit about duelling himself and has sportingly agreed to help me with a short demonstration before we begin. Now, I don't want any of you youngsters to worry - you'll still have your Potions master when I'm through with him, never fear!"

Nobody dared laugh, except for a few apparently suicidal Hufflepuffs who quickly fell silent. "Wouldn't it be good if they finished each other off?" Ron muttered in Harry's ear. Hermione gave them both a warning look, but seemed mostly amused by her soulmate’s comment.

“Five sickles on Snape,” Seamus muttered to Ron as the professors bowed to one another, and Ron shook his head vehemently.

“Nobody will take that bet,” he said, and Harry stifled a laugh at the resigned expression on the half-blood’s face. Lockhart and Snape raised their wands like swords in front of them, and Harry absentmindedly wondered whether muggle fencing had come from magic dueling.

"As you see, we are holding our wands in the accepted combative position," Lockhart told the silent crowd. "On the count of three, we will cast our first spells. Neither of us will be aiming to kill, of course.”

“I wouldn’t bet on that either,” Ron muttered as Snape’s eyes glittered dangerously. Seamus nodded dumbly by his side.

“One, two, three-”

Both of them swung their wands above their heads and pointed them at their opponent; Snape cried: "Expelliarmus!" There was a dazzling flash of scarlet light and Lockhart was blasted off his feet: he flew backward off the stage, smashed into the wall, and slid down it to sprawl on the floor.

“I never thought I’d say this about Snape,” Harry said, “but that was _brilliant.”_

The Potions Master seemed very satisfied with the way Lockhart was forced to stagger to his feet, his robes askew and his hair ruined. Malfoy, who Harry had been sure to keep in the corner of her eye, was laughing uproariously and cheering his head of house.

"Well, there you have it!" Lockhart said, tottering back onto the platform, patting his hair down hopelessly. "That was a Disarming Charm - as you see, I've lost my wand - ah, thank you, Miss Brown - yes, an _excellent_ idea to show them that, Professor Snape, but if you don't mind my saying so, it was obvious what you were about to do. If I had wanted to stop you it would have been _only too easy_ \- however, I felt it would be instructive to let them see..."

Harry had to hide a snort of laughter. Snape had gone back to looking murderous. This time, Lockhart had definitely noticed, and when he next spoke his voice was significantly more strained. "Enough demonstrating! I'm going to come amongst you now and put you all into pairs. Professor Snape, if you'd like to help me-"

They moved through the crowd, matching up partners. Lockhart teamed Neville with Justin Finch-Fletchley, but Snape reached Harry, Ron and Hermione first. "Time to split up the dream team, I think," he sneered. "Weasley, you can partner Finnigan. Granger, with Bulstrode. Potter… with Malfoy.”

 _At least I can keep an eye on him this way,_ Harry thought grumpily as Malfoy advanced on her, malice shining in his grey eyes. Harry breathed deeply, and let her shoulders relax. Then, making sure Malfoy was still watching her, she mimed vomiting. He clenched his jaw, and she smirked.

"Face your partners!" called Lockhart, back on the platform. "And bow!" Harry and Malfoy barely inclined their heads, not taking their eyes off each other.

"Wands at the ready!" shouted Lockhart. "When I count to three, cast your charms to disarm your opponents - _only_ to disarm them, we don't want any accidents - one... two... three!"

Harry swung her wand high, but Malfoy had already started on ‘two’: his spell hit Harry so hard she felt as though she'd been hit over the head with a saucepan. She stumbled, but everything still seemed to be working, and wasting no more time, Harry pointed her wand straight at Malfoy and shouted, _"Rictusempra!"_

A jet of silver light hit Malfoy in the stomach and he doubled up, wheezing with laughter.

"I said disarm only!" Lockhart shouted, sounding rather panicked, but Harry ignored him. _That was for Colin,_ she thought, victorious. Nobody could say she had hurt him, so much as… indisposed him. She waited for him to get back to his feet, but that was a mistake - from the floor, and still gasping for breath, Malfoy pointed his wand at Harry's knees, choked, " _Tarantallegra_!" and the next second Harry's legs began to jerk around out of her control in a kind of quickstep.

"Stop! Stop!" screamed Lockhart, but Snape took charge.

" _Finite Incantatem!_ " he shouted; Harry's feet stopped dancing, Malfoy stopped laughing, and they were able to look up. The hall was, in a word, chaotic. There was a haze of greenish smoke hovering in the air.  Both Neville and Justin were lying on the floor, panting; Ron and Seamus were leaning against each other, exhausted. But Hermione and Millicent Bulstrode were still moving. Millicent had Hermione in a headlock and Hermione was whimpering in pain - both their wands lay forgotten on the floor. Harry leapt forward without thinking and pulled Millicent off. It was difficult; the Slytherin girl was a lot bigger than she was, but she had the advantage of surprise, and apparently a reputation in Slytherin House for fighting dirty by the way Millicent shied away from her kicks.

"Dear, dear," said Lockhart, skittering through the crowd, looking at the aftermath of the duels. "Up you go, Macmillan... Careful there, Miss Fawcett... Pinch it hard, it'll stop bleeding in a second- I think I'd better teach you how to block unfriendly spells," said Lockhart, standing flustered in the midst of the chaos, after he’d done a quick loop of the hall. Harry couldn’t be sure, but she thought she saw Snape roll his eyes from behind him.

Oblivious, Lockhart clapped his hands together. “Let's have a volunteer pair - Longbottom and Finch-Fletchley, how about you-”

“Bad idea,” Snape drawled, gliding over like a large and malevolent bat, “Longbottom causes devastation with the simplest spells. We'll be sending what's left of Finch-Fletchley up to the hospital wing in a matchbox." Neville’s round face burned red.

Lockhart opened and closed his mouth again. “Ah.”

But Snape wasn’t done. “How about Malfoy and Potter?” He said with a twist of his lips that could almost be a smile. Harry felt a lead weight drop into her stomach. Snape had planned this.

"Excellent idea!" said Lockhart, gesturing Harry and Malfoy into the middle of the hall as the crowd backed away to give them room. Harry caught eyes with Ron, who nodded encouragingly. Beside him, still a little shaken from her encounter with Bulstrode, Hermione gave her a thumbs up.

"Now, Harriet," said Lockhart. "When Draco points his wand at you, you do this." He raised his own wand, attempted a complicated sort of wiggling action, and dropped it. Snape smirked as Lockhart quickly picked it up, saying, "Whoops - my wand is a little overexcited-"

“I know the spell, sir,” Harry said quickly. She didn’t, but she figured that dodging was a far safer strategy than trying to do anything Lockhart told her to. Snape moved closer to Malfoy, bent down, and whispered something in his ear. Malfoy smirked, too.

Harry clenched her jaw, and didn’t take her eyes off the two of them. Slowly, she and Malfoy walked forward until they met in the middle, and bowed.

"Scared?" muttered Malfoy, so that only Harry could hear him.

"You wish," said Harry out of the corner of her mouth. They turned, and walked back to the opposing ends.

“One,” Lockhart began counting, “two… three!”

Unlike before, Malfoy did wait until Lockhart reached three, obviously deciding he couldn’t cheat in front of the two teachers and what looked like the entirety of Hogwarts. But he was still quick off the mark- quicker than Harry. She hadn’t even started saying _Expelliarmus_ when he bellowed “ _Serpensortia!_ ”

The end of his wand exploded, and Harry prepared to dodge a spell, only to see no jet of light coming her way. Instead, a long, black snake had shot out of Malfoy’s wand, and raised itself, ready to strike. The crowd screamed and fell away from the stage, desperate to get away from the snake.

Harry redirected her wand towards the reptile, but didn’t know what to say - she couldn’t exactly disarm a snake. Malfoy looked a bit confused - he obviously hadn’t gotten the outcome he was expecting, but he smirked when he saw the fear on her face. "Don't move, Potter," said Snape lazily, clearly enjoying the sight of her standing motionless and pale, eye to eye with the angry snake. "I'll get rid of it for you..."

"Allow me!" shouted Lockhart. Harry’s eyes widened in horror, and she took several large steps back as Lockhart moved towards the snake, wand out. She had learned the hard way with Lockhart to be as far away from his wand as possible.

He brandished his wand at the snake and there was a loud bang; the snake, instead of vanishing, flew ten feet into the air and fell back to the floor with a loud smack. Enraged, hissing furiously, it slithered straight toward Justin Finch-Fletchley and raised itself again, fangs exposed, poised to strike.

“Leave him alone!” Harry hadn’t even realised she was going to speak until she did. Her legs had begun to propel her forwards without her permission. And miraculously - inexplicably - the snake slumped to the floor, docile as a thick, black garden hose, its eyes now on Harry. Harry felt the fear drain out of her. “Good girl,” she said, reaching her hand out, "that's right."

Apparently intrigued, the snake turned away from Justin entirely, and came toward her outstretched palm. “ _A speaker?_ ” The snake said, in the familiar, unplaceable accent that the boa constrictor at the zoo had. _“It has been so long-_ ”

Suddenly, the snake dissolved into black mist, with no warning. Harry jumped back, finally remembering where she was. Snape’s wand was pointed at the spot where the snake had just been, and his expression was… troubling. It was shrewd, and calculating, as if Harry was a particularly hard problem he couldn’t wait to solve. She didn’t like it. She didn’t like it one bit.

Behind Snape, Malfoy was as pale as milk. The hall was silent. Harry’s eyes turned to the crowd of students, every eye of which was on her. Justin, instead of looking grateful or puzzled, looked afraid. They all looked afraid, she realised suddenly. She scanned the hall for Ron and Hermione, but couldn’t find them. Then there was a tugging at the back of her robes. She turned, and saw Ron and Hermione, beckoning her away.

“Come on,” Hermione said quietly, but into the silent hall Harry was sure everyone could hear her, “we need to go.”

Half in a trance, Harry left with them. The crowds parted around her like the red sea, and as they turned the corner, Harry heard the hall burst into a thousand conversations. Ron steered her up to Gryffindor Tower, and pulled her and Hermione up to the boy’s dormitory. He shoved a chair in front of the door, and let out a deep sigh of relief, before turning to Harry.

“You’re a parselmouth,” Ron said frankly, and Harry stared at him. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“A- a what?” Harry asked, turning her head between her two best friends, who wore similar closed expressions.

“A parselmouth!” Ron repeated, and began to pace, “It means you can speak to snakes.”

“I know,” Harry said, confused at what all the fuss was about, “I mean, that's only the second time I've ever done it. I accidentally set a boa constrictor on my cousin Dudley at the zoo once - _long_ story - but it was telling me it had never seen Brazil and I sort of set it free without meaning to - that was before I knew I was a witch, obviously-"

“A boa constrictor… told you it had never seen Brazil?” Hermione said a little faintly, speaking for the first time since they’d barricaded themselves in Ron’s dorm.

“Yeah, so?” Harry said, “I just kind of accepted it as an overactive imagination or whatever. But when Hagrid came with my letter, I just assumed it was a normal wizard thing-”

“Yeah, well, it’s not,” Ron said shortly. “It’s very, very rare. This is bad, Harry. Very bad. Worse than you think.”

“How is it bad?” Harry asked, getting a bit annoyed, “If I hadn’t been able to tell the snake to leave Justin alone, then it might have bit him-”

“Oh, so that’s what you said?” Hermione broke in, looking like she was grappling with being worried like Ron or interested in Harry’s conversation.

“What d'you mean?” Harry said, frowning, “You were there - you both heard me-”

“Harry, that’s just it,” Ron said, kneading his temples, “none of us knew what you were saying. It looked - it looked a bit like you were egging the snake on, you know? Hissing. And when it turned to look at you, and it hissed _back-”_

“I wasn’t hissing!” Harry said immediately, “I was speaking English!”

“Definitely hissing, Harry,” Hermione said with a gulp.

Harry gaped at them both, half waiting for one of them to crack and admit it was all a huge joke. But neither of them did. “How could I speak a language without knowing I was speaking it?” Even if she had, she didn’t see why it was so terrible. Both Ron and Hermione were looking at her like someone had _died_. Like _she_ had died. “And why does it matter if I did?”

"It matters," said Hermione, speaking at last in a hushed voice, "because being able to talk to snakes was what Salazar Slytherin was famous for. That's why the symbol of Slytherin House is a serpent."

Harry's mouth fell open.

"Exactly," said Ron, finally getting the response he’d been expecting from Harry for the entire conversation, but looking no happier for it. "And now the whole school's going to think you're his great-great-great-great-granddaughter or something-"

"But I'm not," said Harry, with a panic she couldn't quite explain. “I’m a Gryffindor!”  _But that’s not entirely true, is it?_ Harry’s mind muttered. The hat had wanted to put her in Slytherin, with him, _because_ of him _,_ but she had said no, she had chose different, she had chosen Gryffindor-

“Oh,” she said suddenly, as sudden realisation crashed down on her. “ _Oh_.”

“What?” Hermione asked, “What is it? What’s _oh?”_

“It’s him,” Harry said simply, looking at them both, ashen, heart thumping in her chest as she realised what she needed to do. What she needed to show them.

“Who?” Ron asked, eyes wild, “Harry, you’re not making any _sense-”_

Her hand went to her wrist. “Oh god,” Hermione was the first one to speak, the first to realise, “it’s not _Malfoy_ is it? I know you don’t want to acknowledge him-”

Ron went faintly green at Hermione’s incorrect guess. “It’s _not?”_ He said, horror struck.

“No,” Harry said neutrally, and she pulled her ribbon over her hand.

Ron looked relieved for about two seconds, before he realised what she was going to do. “Harry, you don’t need to-” He began, but Harry had already turned her wrist over and bared it towards her best friends.

Silence. She felt a tear drip down her face, and she rubbed her face with the sleeve of her jumper. She knew they would realise, almost instantly, who exactly had said _Avada Kedavra_ to Harry the first time they met. “Harry,” Hermione said, and Harry looked up to see she was in tears, “oh, _Harry.”_

That was all the warning she had before Hermione was holding on to her for dear life, and the feel of her wracking sobs set Harry off, and then Ron was wrapping his arms around them both, and he was crying too. They huddled together for an age, and were only broken out of it when someone tried to open the dormitory door. The chair stayed firm.

“Ron?!” Dean’s voice came through the door, and Ron pulled away, his face red and splotchy.

“ _Busy!_ ” He called back, voice thick, and Harry tried to reattach her ribbon to her wrist, but her hands wouldn’t stop shaking. In the end, Hermione took a hold of the fabric and wound it around the joint, tying it in a neat bow.

“Thanks,” Harry whispered, and Hermione shot her a watery smile, that told Harry that Hermione understood, and cared, and didn’t care all at once. And it was freeing.

“I need the loo!” Dean yelled, unaware of the moment passing between the three best friends. Ron looked back at both of the girls, and Harry nodded shakily. He smiled, wan, and pulled her in for a final tight squeeze before he pulled the chair away. Almost immediately, the door burst open, and Dean let out a shout of surprise at seeing Harry and Hermione in the boy’s dorm.

“Sorry,” Hermione muttered, not sounding very sorry at all, and took Harry’s hand before pulling her down the stairs to the common room.

* * *

 

Harry’s plan was to see Justin in Herbology the next day, where she could explain to him that she had been telling the snake to back off, rather than attack him. The weather, however, had other ideas; overnight snow fell, and the entire castle was covered in fine white particles by morning. Professor Sprout, fearing for the mandrakes (and, Harry assumed by extension Colin and Mrs Norris who needed the mandrakes to become un-petrified) cancelled Herbology to put wooly hats and mittens on the plants, something she would not trust to anybody else.

Lavender and Parvati had been weird the night before, communicating solely in eyebrow raises, but by morning they appeared to have forgotten the whole incident. Gryffindor tower was still on edge, and Harry decided to stage a jailbreak. Ron and Hermione, already halfway through their bi-weekly chess tournament, waved her off happily.

“Be safe, yeah?” Ron said, eyes keenly on the chessboard as his bishop trapped Hermione’s knight in a headlock and dragged him, kicking and punching, off the board. Harry promised she would, and Hermione squeezed her hand before she left. The silent support of her two best friends, who Harry had half feared would run for the hills when they figured out exactly who Harry’s soulmate was, meant more than she could say.

She and Hermione had already figured that the parseltongue - as it wasn’t a known Potter family ability - had to have come from her soulmate. It wasn’t unheard of for soulmates to share gifts, even in the muggle world; but in the magical world, there were stories of two bonded people’s magic intertwining, and giving the other abilities they could never have had normally. “And if it’s meant to be a dark wizard’s gift,” Harry said bitterly, “he fits the bill.”

So Harry had decided to visit the library, to research exactly how such a transference of gifts could occur, and how common it actually was. She wasn’t ever going to make her bond with Voldemort a matter of public knowledge, but her mind would be put at rest if she could confirm the explanation. But again, fate had other plans - no sooner had she entered the library and begun browsing the entire section on soulbond magic, she overheard a conversation about her.

"You definitely think it is Potter, then, Ernie?" said Hannah Abbott, Neville’s Hufflepuff soulmate said anxiously. Harry frowned. Think she was what?

"Hannah," said the MacMillan boy solemnly, "she's a _Parselmouth_. Everyone knows that's the mark of a Dark witch or wizard. Have _you_ ever heard of a decent one who could talk to snakes? They called Slytherin himself _Serpent-tongue_."

Harry felt like something cold was gripping around her heart. She wanted to step out, confront them, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t. She was meant to be in the house of the brave, but just then she felt about as courageous as a mouse.

Oblivious of her eavesdropping, the Hufflepuffs were making concerned noises at this, and Ernie went on, clearly thriving off the attention, "Remember what was written on the wall? _Enemies of the Heir, Beware._ Potter never liked Filch, I heard they had an argument. Next thing we know, Filch's cat is attacked. That first year, Creevey, was annoying Potter at the Quidditch match, taking pictures of her while she was lying in the mud with a broken arm. Next thing we know,  _that same day_ , Creevey's been attacked."

"She always seems so nice, though," said Hannah uncertainly, "and, well, she's the one who made You-Know-Who disappear. And I know Neville likes her. She can’t be all bad, surely?"

Ernie lowered his voice mysteriously, causing the Hufflepuffs bent closer, and Harry edged nearer so that she could catch Ernie's words.

"No one knows _how_ she survived that attack by You-Know-Who. I mean to say, she was only a _baby_ when it happened. She should have been blasted into smithereens. Only a _really_ powerful Dark witch could have survived a curse like that." He dropped his voice until it was barely more than a whisper, and said, "That's probably why You- Know-Who wanted to kill her in the first place. Didn't want competition in the future. I wonder what other powers Potter's been hiding?"

Harry was just about to do something - walk in, walk away, anything, when she heard a chair scraping backwards. “That’s a terrible thing to say,” Hannah Abbott said, her voice shaking. Through the shelves, Harry saw her crossing her arms over her chest. “A lot of people were targeted by You-Know-Who for no reason. Neville’s _parents-”_

“Oh come on Hannah, you know I didn’t mean _Neville-”_

“It’s the same thing!” Hannah said shrilly, “Harry was a victim, just like Neville! One way or another, they both lost their parents, and you want to make out- you want to-” She broke down into tears.

Emboldened by Hannah’s ardent defence of Neville (and by extension, her) Harry stepped out from the stacks. Ernie was the first to notice her, and his eyes went wide and round. “You-” He spluttered, “How long-”

“Long enough,” Harry said coolly, and smiled awkwardly at Hannah, who was blushing as red as a tomato, eyes still leaking teardrops. “Thank you for not thinking I deserved to die as a baby. You’d really expect more people to have the same amount of common courtesy.”

A few of the Hufflepuffs, to their credit, had the decency to look ashamed. Ernie MacMillan was not one of them.

“You see here,” he said, “don’t you try and turn this around on us! You’re the one who set that snake on Justin-”

“I saved Justin from a nasty bite,” Harry snapped back, “or didn’t you notice that the snake was rearing up _before_ I said anything? When I told it to come away, it did. I guess they’re right when they say Hufflepuff is full of duffers,” she sneered, and turned on her heel sharply. Behind her, she heard Ernie stammering, but knew she needed to walk out with her dignity.

She made it about three corridors away until her composure cracked and she broke down into uncontrollable sobs. It was abandoned, and she was thankful it was dark so that nobody would be able to see her crying if they rounded the corner unexpectedly. She should get ready for Transfiguration, the empty Herbology slot was almost over, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care, even if McGonagall was her favourite teacher. People thought she was the Heir of Slytherin. They thought she was the one going around petrifying people.

 _What would they think_ , she thought desperately, _if they knew that the Dark Lord that I vanquished failed to kill me because he was my soulmate?_

It was a well known phenomena in the muggle world; a soulmate could not kill a soulmate. The wounds you attempted to inflict on them would appear on you instead. There was nothing special about her, nothing special that saved her on the night her parents died. She just had the worst luck in the world.

“I should have died with them,” she says aloud, and it seems more real in the empty corridor. More solid. She had had a happy life for a year and a half, where she was loved, from what she understands from Hagrid’s stories and the photo album he’d given her at the end of the year before. Better it had all ended then, she thinks miserably, when all she had known was warmth and happiness. Better it had all ended before she knew what she was losing, before she knew being a freak, an orphan, a monster. But it was not to be. She was here, and she was suffering, all because a Dark Lord couldn’t check her wrist first and get a follower to kill her instead.

Vision still blurred with tears, Harry got to her feet, and made her way down the corridor. Unexpectedly, she fell over something hard and stiff on the floor - when her eyes adjusted, she couldn’t help the high pitched, embarrassingly girly scream that tore it’s way out of her mouth. She paused for breath, overcome with horror, and her eyes fell on another, somehow even more terrifying sight.

Her screams had attracted some hurried footsteps. Harry turned, and saw Cedric, the boy she had met at the beginning of the year on the platform. He was a Hufflepuff, she remembered, and half expected him to hate her too, but there was nothing on his face but worry and concern. “Harry!” He cried, clearly seeing the terrified expression on her face and her damp cheeks, “Harry what-”

He stopped in the middle of the hallway as he saw it too. The blood drained from his cheeks as he stared at the petrified body of Justin Finch-Fletchly on the floor, and the horizontal, blackened shade of Nearly Headless Nick beside him. Around them, hundreds of spiders were scuttling over the floor.

* * *

 

“Miss Potter, I know we’ve gone over this before, but I promise, this is the last time. Can you please recount, in full, exactly what happened before you came upon Mr Finch-Fletchly and Sir Nicholas?” McGonagall’s voice was kind but firm, and Harry nodded reflexively.

She had told Cedric the whole thing first, while he yelled for some of the other people who heard Harry screaming to get a teacher. Unfortunately, the closest teacher was Professor Snape, but Harry had been in such a state she didn’t even care as she blubbed all over him, barely able to speak through her hysteria. By the time Snape had summoned Dumbledore and McGonagall, she had a hold of herself, and she had started to tell them what happened when Lockhart appeared on the scene and began monologuing about how if only he could have been there, he could have killed the monster and the Heir with one spell.

Sensibly, Snape, McGonagall, Dumbledore decided that Dumbledore’s office would be a more better place to establish the facts, and Cedric and Harry had been bound to follow. Cedric had told what he knew first - he told them the brief overview that Harry had told him, as well as when he heard her scream and when he saw the bodies - and now it was Harry’s turn.

“I was… I was upset. I’d come from the library, and I wanted somewhere to go where… where no one would see me crying.” She coloured under Dumbledore’s understanding gaze, and McGonagall’s pitying one. Snape, at least, seemed unmoved. She was strangely grateful that he was there to treat her exactly the same. “I didn’t… I didn’t actually see them for about five minutes. I actually tripped over Justin. I didn’t- I didn’t understand what I was looking at at first, and then I saw Nick and- I screamed. And kept on screaming until Cedric came.”

It didn’t paint her in a particularly favourable light, Harry thought, as she saw the professors exchange glances. Too emotional to check her surroundings, too girly to do anything useful except scream. She felt stupid, and weak, and she hated it.

“Miss Potter…” Snape’s silky voice began, and Harry forced herself to meet his gaze.

“Yes, sir?” She said morosely.

“Why were you upset?”

The potions master’s question blindsided her. Whatever she had been expecting - _are you the Heir of Slytherin, Potter? Did you petrify the boy, Potter? Do you think your celebrity will save you this time, Potter? -_ it was not that. She gaped at him, and he rolled her eyes.

“Answer the question,” he said curtly.

“It was stupid,” she said, “I just… I heard some of the students, talking. About me. They said…” She licked her lips. The professors probably already knew about the rumours going around - Snape had been at the dueling club, after all, had seen the whole sorry affair. “They said they thought that I was a dark witch.” Snape’s eyebrows shot up. Maybe they didn’t know. “Because of the dueling club, when I spoke Parseltongue.” The word Parseltongue seemed to break some kind of seal, as Harry suddenly couldn’t stop talking. “I didn’t know it wasn’t a normal thing- and I didn’t know it was a dark talent. I just told the snake to stop, I swear, that was all, and it _did,_ and I’m not the Heir of Slytherin and I don’t _care_ about blood purity - my best friend is a muggleborn! And they said that Voldemort attacked me because he thought I was a dark witch and he wanted to get rid of the competition-”

“Quiet, Potter,” Snape said, and frowned deeply. There was an emotion that Harry couldn’t quite identify in his eyes.

Harry cowered at the professor’s unreadable expression. Dumbledore said “ _Severus_ ,” quietly, which seemed to bring the potion’s master back to himself, and his expression slipped back into the normal contempt.

“Potter,” Snape said, after a long pause, “I can honestly say that is the _stupidest_ thing I have ever heard, and I have been teaching incompetent children for over a decade.”

Harry didn’t know whether to be insulted or flattered. “Thanks,” she said finally, and Snape seemed still to be in awe of the ridiculousness of the statement, shaking his head to himself as if trying to right himself. Soon enough, his trademark scowl was back in place, but his brooding seemed directed inwards rather than towards Harry, which she was incredibly grateful for.

“Who _exactly_ said this?” McGonagall asked suspiciously. “It doesn’t sound like Cuthbert has been properly covering the recent wizarding wars if students are so misinformed-”

Harry and Cedric’s were forced to stifle laughter at the idea of Binns teaching anything in History properly, especially anything other than his precious Goblin rebellions. “I didn’t know their names, miss,” Harry managed to say under a stern look. This was, of course, a bold faced lie, but Harry knew that in both the magical and muggle worlds, you didn’t tell tales to teachers.

“Hmm,” McGonagall grunted to herself, and turned to Dumbledore.

“I think,” the aged headmaster said, “we can exonerate both Mr Diggory and Miss Potter of any wrongdoing. They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time - and it was rather lucky that Mr Finch-Fletchly wasn’t discovered when classes let out, or we’d have to figure out how to attach stone fingers to living flesh when he was restored with the mandrake draught.” He smiled at both Harry and Cedric with a smile. “You may go.”

Neither of them needed telling twice.

* * *

 

“They were well out of order,” Cedric said frankly as he and Harry walked away from Dumbledore’s office.

Harry looked at him in askance.

“Ernie and his lot,” Cedric expanded.

“How did you-”

“I’m a Hufflepuff, Harry,” Cedric reminded her with a self-deprecating grin, “I know everyone in my house. And Ernie was being particularly loud with his conspiracy theories last night. I told him to knock it off, but he clearly didn’t listen. It was good of you not to get him in trouble.”

Harry waved away his thanks. “I’m just glad you don’t think the same. I was afraid…”

“That all of Hufflepuff was full of idiots?”

Harry laughed. “Something like that. Thank you, for coming. I wasn’t in any state to try and alert anyone beyond screaming my head off. You were brilliant.”

“It was nothing,” Cedric said, but Harry noticed his neck was a bit red. Coming at the end of the corridor, Harry stopped and awkwardly pointed towards Gryffindor tower. Cedric pointed the other way, and they shared a smile.

Harry went to turn away, before she stopped herself. “I’m sorry,” she said.

Cedric frowned. “What for?”

“Justin,” she said, biting her lip, “you said you knew everyone in your house? It must be quite a shock. To see him like that.”

The boy shrugged, but Harry could see a rawness behind his eyes for a second. “I have faith in Professor Sprout,” he said, his voice a little more forced, “she’ll get him back soon.”

Harry nodded, and strode away awkwardly before she said anything else silly in front of the older boy. It was fair to say that the day had not gone as she’d planned.

* * *

 

“I have some bad news,” Hermione said just before Christmas. She looked a little nervous as she looked at Harry, half fearing her reaction.

“Hermione,” Harry said frankly, “the entire school thinks I’m the heir of Slytherin. How bad can the news be?”

“It isn't Malfoy.”

Harry sat up properly this time. “What?”

Hermione sighed, and pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’ve gone through the old yearbooks. The last attack was fifty years ago, but the problem is - Mr Malfoy isn’t old enough to have even been _born_ then, let alone to open the chamber.”

 _"What?”_ Harry repeated, and Hermione, clearly anticipating her disbelief, pushed forward a large, leather bound book with the Hogwarts seal. _Class of 1973._ She opened to a page with _Prefects_ written in golden writing, and Lucius Malfoy’s snooty face looked out at Harry under the Slytherin section. It was him, without a doubt. The hair was unmistakable.

“But if it’s not Malfoy…" Harry slumped back in her chair, “Who? We know Dobby is the Malfoy’s elf, how could he know about the chamber if it isn't Malfoy-”

“The Malfoys have a lot of connections, Harry,” Hermione said, “it’s very likely that Dobby simply overheard one of them talking about the Chamber. And there’s no way we can figure out _who_ , considering Dobby’s certainly been ordered not to tell anyone the particulars of who Malfoy’s guests are, or what exactly they said.”

Harry bit her lip, frustration welling up inside her. “So we’re back at square one?”

“Not quite.” Hermione said, and out of her school bag she brought seven similar tomes to the first one - all however being noticeably older. _Class of 1943, Class of 1944, Class of 1945…_ she realised they went all the way up to _Class of 1949._

“What are these?” Harry asked.

“More yearbooks,” Hermione said.

“Well, obviously,” Harry said with an eyeroll, “but what are we going to do with them?”

“The was a _death_ ,” Hermione said in an excited whisper. Without any context, Harry imagined that Hermione would look a bit like a sociopath in that moment.

“Somebody actually died?” Harry said, barely able to believe it. Surely if there had been a death, they would all know about it? Hogwarts had a thriving gossip network, and Hermione and Harry both roomed with two of its keenest contributors. If there had been  a death, Lavender and Parvati would have been among the first to know.

“It was hushed up,” Hermione continued, “so I couldn’t find exactly _who_ it was, and the portraits have clearly been told to stay quiet, but one of them - a Sir Cadogan, utterly barmy knight up on the third floor corridor - let slip about ‘that dreadful business in 1943’.”

“Fifty years ago,” Harry breathed, “give or take. Forty-nine. Whatever.”

“Right,” Hermione said, “so that means that the heir is somewhere in one of these,” she said gesturing to the books.

Harry picked up one, and flicked through the pages. The years were much larger then, apparently. “But this will take forever,” she said, “It’ll be like looking for a needle in a haystack - but we don’t even know what or who we’re looking for.”

“It’s the only lead we have,” Hermione said with a sigh.

“Okay,” Harry said grumpily, before looking around. “Where’s Ron got to? Ran off when he heard we had to do more reading?”

“About that,” Hermione said, “I thought we could break it to him together, that Malfoy isn’t the heir. He might not… react well.”

“You told me first so you didn’t have to tell Ron alone,” Harry said after a moment of thought, “Hermione, that’s practically _Slytherin_ of you.”

Hermione pursed her lips, but Harry just laughed at the strict expression which would be more at home on Professor McGonagall’s face than a twelve year old girl’s. “It’s not that I don’t think Ron will believe me,” Hermione said with a huff, “but I just… wanted to minimize his reaction.”

Harry couldn’t help the grin that made it’s way onto her face at the image of Ron's reaction to finding out they had wasted months sneaking around after the wrong person. And to be told they were now going to be looking in _books_ for the answer.

“You may have a point,” she agreed.

* * *

 

At Harry and Ron’s urging, Hermione went home for Christmas. “The heir hasn’t exactly made a secret of the fact that he’s going after muggleborns,” Ron had argued, “and I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but _you’re_ a muggleborn. Go home, where it’s safe, and let Harry and me go through the yearbooks.”

Grumpily, Hermione did just that, but she made both Ron and Harry promise that they wouldn’t slack off. And for once, she would be pleasantly surprised; Ron and Harry were very, very motivated to try and find the heir.

“We do the same process of elimination we did with Dobby, pretty much,” Ron said after he’d gotten over the fact that they weren’t going to be able to get Malfoy expelled for mistreating his house elf, as he apparently was not the heir of Slytherin, “just with wider parameters. Any pureblood goes this time, no matter how rich they are. We also need to figure out which of them have kids in Hogwarts right now - the difficult part is if the girls have married and their kids have different surnames. And we don’t know hardly any of the firsties, or the upper years save Fred, George, Wood and Percy. But I’d say we can pretty safely focus on the Slytherin purebloods.”

Even with that criteria, the list of names that they were left with was over twelve inches long. _Avery, Abbott, Brown, Black, Bulstrode, Burke, Crouch, Crabbe, Carrow, Fawley, Flint, Goyle, Greengrass, Longbottom, Lestrange, MacMillan, Moody, Nott, Ollivander, Parkinson, Potter, Prince, Sayre, Shacklebolt, Selwyn, Travers, Urquart, Yaxley..._

Any name that Ron didn’t even hardly recognise was thrown out. “The heir of Slytherin has got to be from one of these big, famous families,” Ron explained, “and every pureblood, even the blood traitors like us, know pretty much all the other purebloods. So no matter how much this guy-” He randomly pointed to a aristocratic looking, dark eyed boy in the 1945 yearbook, who seemed very unimpressed with both Ron and Harry, “looks like a pureblood, his name isn’t pureblood at all. Very muggle. Heir of Slytherin, who famously hated muggles, isn’t going to have a muggle surname.”

“And of these?” Harry said, gesturing to their list, which she feared still wasn’t quite as comprehensive as it should be.

“I think we can get rid of the ones that aren’t in Slytherin,” Ron said.

Harry frowned, “But surely, if you were smart and you were the heir of Slytherin, you wouldn’t want to be too obvious. You could ask the hat to put you in a different house.”

Now it was Ron’s turn to frown. “Ask the hat to put you in a house? Can you do that? I thought it just sorted regardless of what you wanted.”

“Yeah,” Harry said quietly, “I asked it. It wanted to put me in Slytherin because of- well, because of him,” she said gesturing subtly to her wrist. Ron’s eyes filled with understanding, but thankfully no pity. She didn’t think she could have beared to be pitied. “I asked it not to.”

“Okay,” Ron said, turning back to the new list of suspects, “how do we narrow it down now?”

“Figure out which of them have family in Hogwarts right now?” Harry said.

Ron sighed. “I had a horrible feeling you’d say that.”

* * *

 

By the time Hermione returned for the Spring Term, they hadn’t made much progress. “Other than the obvious ones with the same names,” Ron said, pointing at names like _Carrow, Flint_ and _Goyle,_ “we haven’t made much progress. Like, this Prince girl - she could have gone on to marry anyone, and her kid could be here right now, but nobody knows exactly where she went after Hogwarts. And the ones who we already looked into when we were looking for Dobby’s family - most of them we can cross off because we already eliminated most of them for either being a blood traitor, a Hufflepuff, or too young. See, the Carrow’s father was a graduate in 1949 - making him a firstie when the Chamber was opened. I really don’t think it could have possibly been him. Or Greengrass - that’s Daphne and Astoria’s grandfather. If he opened the chamber, why wouldn’t his son do the same thing when he went to Hogwarts? It makes no sense to skip a generation. So they’re out - other families like the Longbottoms are the same, even if it hadn’t been, well-”

“ _Neville_.” Harry said frankly, so Ron didn't have to.

“I mean, we did find that Harry’s grandad’s name was Fleamont, which is possibly the worst name known to man, but that was in an older yearbook that we accidentally picked up-”

“You found more of your family?” Hermione cut him, beaming at Harry. Harry blushed, and turned to the dog-eared page that she’d spent more time than she’d ever admit staring at, before passing _Class of 1926_ to Hermione. From the page grinned a lanky youth, with hair possibly even wilder and more untamable than Harry’s own, and thick glasses. His ears stuck out a bit, but there was an innate happy-go-luckiness in his face that Harry liked a lot.

“He’s got your nose!” Hermione squealed.

Harry blushed, pleased. “It’s more like I’ve got his nose, but yeah. And the hair looks like it’s all his fault too.”

“It has character,” Hermione argued, her own bushy locks quivering.

“But yeah, we haven’t actually figured out anything _important_. And we struggled enough keeping an eye on Malfoy - we can’t do surveillance on at least twenty people.”

“Well, no,” Hermione admitted, “but this is still important.” She jabbed a finger at Fleamont, who looked rather confused at being poked. “Oh, sorry Mr Potter.”

“They can’t hear you, Mione,” Ron said slowly, “They’re just pictures.”

Hermione turned red. “I know! It’s just- he’s _moving._ The portraits can hear us!”

“The portraits are imbued with magical intent and memories,” Ron said, “they’re different. Photographs are just taken with a normal camera, but put in a special potion for development that makes them move. There’s no particular intent behind that.”

Her embarrassment fading, Hermione was paying attention to Ron’s words. “But that’s so interesting!” She said, and Harry decided it was time to make her getaway before Hermione began grilling her soulmate about wizarding photography down the most minute detail. Harry loved her friends, she did, but they got fairly wrapped up in each other sometimes. Not Petunia and Vernon wrapped up, where they actively pushed her away, but there was always going to be something between Ron and Hermione that Harry could not understand, could never understand.

And, as she usually did when she wanted to go somewhere to forget the fact that she would never have a soulmate like most people did, who would love and support her, she went to Moaning Myrtle’s toilet.

Unlike the first time she stumbled in, she now actively sought out the silent bathroom. Myrtle had been hostile at first, terrified she was there to tease her, but slowly she had begun to relax in Harry’s presence. She didn’t badger Harry to tell her what was bothering her, but whenever Harry cried, she made herself scarce in a U-bend. It was the perfect arrangement. If anyone heart Harry’s sobs, they’d think it was Myrtle. And nobody would think to look for her in the haunted toilet.

When she entered the bathroom that morning, however, something was definitely different. Myrtle crying was not unusual in the slightest - but the near flooding of the room was. Well, it was at least less common than it used to be. Harry had no sooner opened the door than her shoes and tights were soaked.

“Myrtle?” Harry called, wading deeper into the bathroom. The ghost was sat on top of a cubicle door, weeping. She looked up at the sound of Harry’s voice. Her face was contorted into an expression of deep pain. Her suffering was palpable, and not just because the candles had all be extinguished by the water that was still rising up the walls.

“Who’s that?” She cried, “Come to throw something else at me?”

“What- no! Myrtle, it’s me! Harry!”

Myrtle’s distrustful look disappeared, and she rubbed at her wet eyes. “Oh, Harry- oh it was _awful!_ Somebody just came in and _chucked_ a book at me! The last time somebody threw something at me was when Olive Hornby hit me in the back with a stink bomb!”

At the words ‘Olive Hornby’ Harry immediately understood just why Myrtle was so upset. Olive Hornby had been the worst of Myrtle’s tormentors in life, and was most probably the reason that Myrtle had returned to the mortal plane, trapped in between life and death for all eternity - her unfinished business with the girl having kept her tethered to life. Harry knew that anything that reminded Myrtle of Olive was likely to put her in this state.

“Oh Myrtle,” Harry said in a sympathetic tone, “that must have been terrible for you. I don’t know why somebody would do something so awful, but maybe they didn’t mean to hurt you?”

“Didn’t mean to?” Myrtle cried, “Of course they meant to! They hate me! They all hate me - fat Myrtle, miserable Myrtle, ugly Myrtle-”

“I don’t hate you,” Harry said gently. “Now, where’s this book? It might have a name in, so I can find whoever threw it at you.”

Myrtle shrugged morosely. “Somewhere in here,” she said tearfully, “they tried to flush it down the toilet but it just spat it back out. I just- I need to be _alone_ , Harry. Just take it away and _go.”_

Harry nodded, disappointed. She didn’t know where else to go to be sad, now that dark corridors had been forever ruined for her. She caught sight of something black under the water - triumphantly, she bent down and fished it off of the flooded bathroom floor. “I’ve got it,” she told Myrtle, who seemed to be ignoring her in favour of going back to feeling sorry for herself, “I’ll just go now.”

Her only answer was a loud sob.

The book was, miraculously, undamaged from its time underwater. It was black, and on the cover it was embossed in small gold lettering: _1942-1943._ How did such an old diary end up in Hogwarts, she wondered? She opened it, and on the inside cover, slightly smudged in black ink was written in neat loops: _T. M. Riddle._

Where had she heard that name before? She frowned. She’d probably seen it in one of the many, _many_ yearbooks she and Ron had pored over over Christmas. She turned the page - blank. Quickly, she flicked through the rest of the pages - all blank. T. M. Riddle had clearly never written in his diary. On the back cover, _Vauxhall Road Variety Store_ was printed. Muggleborn, he had to have been, to have bought anything from Vauxhall Road.

She sighed, disappointed, and let the book spring closed. It would have been useful to have had something from a muggleborn perspective from the first time the chamber was opened.

Harry put the diary in her pocket, and promptly forgot about it.

* * *

 

A month had passed with no attacks, and Harry was starting to let herself believe that the Heir of Slytherin had decided it was getting too risky to release the beast with all of Hogwarts on high alert. She imagined the monster getting ready to go into another fifty years of hibernation. It was a good thought.

Hermione was the only one of them still studying the yearbooks - all save the 1926 version, of course, which Harry had ended up bartering with Madam Pince for. In the end, the stern librarian copied the book, as it was ‘an important part of Hogwart’s history’ and charged Harry five galleons to keep the copy.

“That’s daylight robbery!” Ron had said when he heard.

Harry shrugged, “It was out of print a long time ago. I can see where she’s coming from. I’m kind of amazed she let me have it.”

Five galleons was, after all, a drop in the ocean of the Potter family vault, but Harry had the good sense not to rub her inherited wealth in Ron’s face. She dug her way into her trunk, to place the yearbook safe and sound at the very bottom, when her hand touched the diary.

She frowned as she picked it up, and it took her a moment to remember where she got it from. She weighed it in her hand. Harry found she didn’t really want to put it back in the case and forget about it again - something in her mind told her that she had seen this book before, that T. M. Riddle was a friend she had had from when she was very small.

That couldn’t be it, of course. Even if he hadn’t been fifty years her senior or so, Harry had never had friends when she was a child. Dudley’s gang saw to that.

She ran her hands over the leather. It was soft, as if it had just been bought yesterday. Suddenly, Harry wondered if it had spells on it to keep it looking brand new, even after fifty years. She flipped it open. The name, which before had been a little smudged, was now crisp and dark. _T. M. Riddle._ She traced the name.

Before she could really think about it, Harry dug around in her satchel for her quill, and opened up her pot of unspillable ink. She sat cross legged on the bed, and tapped the feather against her lip. What to write. _Harriet_ _J. Potter._

Her handwriting looked positively dreadful compared to the smooth lines of T. M. Riddle’s, but she had managed to join up all her letters and not leave any ink spots anywhere. She was quite happy with her attempt, and wondered what to write next, when her initials faded away before her eyes.

She blinked. Blinked again. She rubbed at the page with her finger, and found it dry as a bone. _That’s weird. That’s really weird._

Perhaps it had also been spelled for only Riddle to be able to write in it, considering his name was still inscribed on the page?

No sooner had Harry thought as such, but black ink began appearing on the page, in the same precise handwriting that was already at the top of the book.

_Hello, Harriet Potter. My name is Tom Riddle. How did you come by my diary?_

Harry’s mouth dropped open. She looked around the dormitory - she knew it was empty, but she half wondered if somebody would jump out and scream ‘just joking!’ But nobody did. “I love magic,” Harry said to herself with feeling.

 _It was in the girl’s toilets,_ she wrote quickly as the question began to fade away, back into the pages of the diary. _Somebody tried to flush it down the toilet._

 _I shouldn’t be too surprised,_ the diary replied almost instantly _. Many would not want the secrets in this diary to come out. It is a good thing I found a way to record my memories in more lasting ways than ink._

Harry read the sentence over again, before she poised her quill to write. _What secrets?_

_This diary holds memories, Harriet Potter. Things that were covered up, and never meant to see the light of day again. Terrible things that happened at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry._

_That’s where I am now,_ Harry wrote, _what terrible things?_ She swallowed, before continuing her sentence. _Does it have something to do with the Chamber of Secrets?_

 _You know about the Chamber do you?_ Riddle replied. _In my day, they said it was a legend. That it was a fairy tale. That was a_ lie _._

Harry breath caught. Could this be it? Could they finally find out what happened fifty years ago when the Chamber was last opened? Riddle, oblivious to her internal commentary, continued writing.

_In my fifth year, the Chamber was opened and the monster attacked several students, finally killing one. I caught the person who'd opened the Chamber and he was expelled. But the Headmaster, Professor Dippet, ashamed that such a thing had happened at Hogwarts, forbade me to tell the truth. A story was given out that the girl had died in a freak accident. They gave me a nice, shiny, engraved trophy for my trouble and warned me to keep my mouth shut. But I knew it could happen again. The monster lived on, and the one who had the power to release it was not imprisoned._

“Not imprisoned?” Harry breathed. Her mind was spinning. _Who was it?_ She scribbled back, _It’s happening again, it’s happening now. There’s been three petrifications, and nobody knows who’s behind it._

 _I can show you,_ the words appeared on the page no sooner than Harry’s had faded away, _no need to take my word for it. I can take you inside my memory of the night I caught him._

Harry stared at the words, her mouth dry. Go- inside? She didn’t know anything about this magic. She didn’t know who Riddle was, about why this diary ended up in Hogwarts.

Apparently noticing her lack of an answer, new words appeared on the page. _Please, let me show you._

Harry swallowed, and before she could think better of it, wrote her reply. _Okay._

* * *

 

No sooner was Harry out of the memory did she kick the diary off her bed on instinct. It fell noiselessly to the floor, and flopped shut. Breathing hard, she put a hand to her chest and felt her heart beating out a tattoo against her ribs.

“No,” she said to herself, convincing herself, pleading with her own mind who had seen the proof, “no, it can’t be true. It can’t be.”

After she had calmed down, she picked up the diary again, which to the eye looked like any blank book that had never been filled out. _Hagrid?_ She wrote, hand shaking. _Hagrid opened the chamber?_

 _He did,_ Tom wrote back.

 _It makes no sense,_ she wrote, her mind whirring, _he’s not a pureblood. He’s half-giant! And the Hagrids aren’t a pureblood family! Plus, he wasn’t in any of the yearbooks we looked through-_

 _He wouldn’t be,_ the diary pointed out, _he was expelled after I caught him in the act. Only graduating students are featured in the yearbooks._

Harry breathed, head aching. It made no sense. It made too much sense. Even when Hagrid had come to rescue her, he had told her he wasn’t supposed to use magic - Ollivander had said something similar, about the wand that had been broken. _Not Hagrid,_ she wrote, finally, _I know him. He’s my friend. He’d never hurt a fly. Whatever- whatever was in the box- it will have been one of his creatures. He loves them, to the point of madness. In my first year, he tried to raise a baby dragon. He never would have hurt anyone-_

_Like a dragon, an acromantula is a XXXXX beast. It seems he is still up to his old tricks, including reopening the chamber and petrifying people._

Harry felt sick. _But if people know that- if the chamber closed after he was expelled- why keep him on here? He’s been the groundskeeper for- for forever. He could have opened it at any time in the last fifty years, but he hasn’t!_

 _Or he was waiting for an opportunity,_ Tom countered coolly, _waiting for everyone to forget what he did, and then do the same thing again._

 _You’re wrong,_ she wrote, _you have to be wrong. He saved me, saved me from my aunt and uncle, he doesn’t have it in him to kill or petrify or whatever the heir did-_

_I know you don’t want to hear this-_

_NO!_ Harry wrote the two words all over the page, her quill spurting ink everywhere with the force she was putting behind it. She didn’t wait to see it fade away before she snapped it closed and threw it to the ground.

“No,” she said to herself, and to her horror realised there were tears in her eyes. Furiously, she wiped them away. She had done enough crying for a lifetime. It could not be Hagrid. Tom Riddle had got it wrong. Not Hagrid who had saved her. Not Hagrid who had baked her her first ever birthday cake, who bought her Hedwig because he thought she needed a friend. Not Hagrid who made cakes as hard as rocks and called three headed monsters of legend _Fluffy._

At that moment, the door swung open. Harry looked up, and saw Hermione, who was looking at her strangely. “Harry?” she asked, “Is everything okay? You look very pale.”

“Yeah,” Harry choked out, “I just think I’m coming down with something.”

Hermione frowned sympathetically. “Do you want me to take you to the Hospital Wing?”

Harry shook her head, a lump in her throat. “I just need to sleep,” she told her, and Hermione slowly nodded her head.

“Alright, just let me know if you need anything.”

* * *

Harry tries to ask Hagrid multiple times. But every time she thinks about it, plays out the situation in her mind, she loses her nerve. House of the brave indeed. Harry is running scared from the imagined reaction of Hagrid. Sometimes, he shouts. Sometimes, he’s embarrassed. Sometimes, he cries.

She can’t risk any of those happening. She just can’t.

But she does tell Ron and Hermione after a week or so of mulling it over, pacing, panicking. “He must have got it wrong,” Hermione said, “Riddle made a mistake.”

“He was right about the trophy though,” Ron said, “I spent a detention polishing it.”

“And he wouldn’t have got the trophy if the attacks hadn’t stopped after he got Hagrid expelled,” Harry finished miserably.

“So the real culprit took the opportunity to bow out while Hagrid took the fall,” Hermione insisted.

“Maybe the same thing’s happening now,” Ron said, “after the duelling club, everyone was suspecting Harry because of her parseltongue- sorry, mate, but they were. Maybe they went after Justin just to increase those fears, and then put it all to bed.

“I just hope it’s over soon,” Harry said, “they’re saying that the mandrakes are almost ready to be harvested. Then Colin and Justin will be woken up, and they can say who and what they saw.”

"And Mrs Norris," Ron said morosely.

“Either way,” Hermione said, “I think I’m going to the library to check up on Riddle’s story. Want to join me?” Whether or not they wanted to, Harry and Ron were well aware they didn’t have a choice. “And bring Riddle’s diary! I think we need to ask him more about it.”

Harry sighed, and went up to her dorm. And stood, shocked in the doorway, before lurching forward into the ransacked room.

“Hermione!” She yelled at the top of her voice after assessing the damage, “I think I have a lead!”


	2. Chapter 2

“A female Gryffindor,” Hermione said, pacing, “that narrows it down. That narrows it down a lot.”

“How does the diary being stolen prove any of that?” Ron asked.

“Boys can’t enter the girl’s dorms,” Harry explained, “it’s something that the female prefects told in first year. Plus… the upper years talk.”

“But you’re in my dorm all the time!” Ron cried in outrage. “That’s sexist!”

“Kind of,” Hermione said with a shrug, “but in this case it actually helps us, because it narrows down the possibilities. Harry only told us this morning about the diary, in the common room. We had been talking for about half an hour, if that - and I assume you haven’t told anyone else?”

“Obviously not,” Harry said with a roll of her eyes.

“So, it was a female Gryffindor, who was in the common room in the last hour, who overheard us and doubled back to take the diary to stop Tom from talking.”

“But Mione- pretty much everyone in Gryffindor passed through here to go down to the Great Hall for breakfast. And there’s no female Gryffindors on our list!”

Hermione frowned. “Not with the way we’ve been ruling them out, no. But if we literally just look at every pureblood female Gryffindor - that gives us a bigger pool. Alicia Spinnet is a pureblood, and so is Angelina. Katie’s a half-blood. Parvati is a pureblood too, but her family only recently came over from India in the last twenty years or so, so I’d say she’s out. Lavender is a pureblood, and her father was at school fifty years ago-”

“ _Lavender?”_ Harry said incredulously, “Hermione, I know we’re working off a very small sample here, but _Lavender?”_

“I’m just listing them all out,” Hermione sniped, before going back to thinking aloud. “Eloise Midgen is a halfblood, although her mother was a pureblood, so is Stimpson, and Fay for that matter. Fairbourne… I’m not sure about Fairbourne. She’s a quiet one, but Codnor might now - Codnor’s a muggleborn like me, so that puts her in the clear. If we’re still working off of eliminating first years, that excludes Ginny-”

“Ginny wasn’t already excluded?” Ron asks, looking very defensive at the mention of his younger sister’s name, “She’s got six older brothers all of who could have opened the chamber, is from a blood-traitor family and hasn’t a purist bone in her body, but what excludes her is her _age_?”

Hermione locks eyes with him, and sighs. “I know. I’m sorry. This is just- I never expected it to be one of _us_ , you know, for all that we were keeping our options open in regards to every house but Hufflepuff? I always figured it was a Slytherin, and what we found in the _Sacred 28_ seemed to prove it.”

Ron accepts the apology with a wave of his hand. “But still,” he says, fiddling with his tie, “all those girls you listed - I don’t think any of them are capable of it.”

“That, or we have a _very_ good actress among us,” Harry said miserably. She sat up suddenly, and looked at her two friends. “What if we’re going about this the wrong way?”

“Hmm?” Two sets of eyes looked at her in confusion.

“We’re trying to find the heir to track the monster, yes?” Cautious nods were her reply. “Why don’t we try to track the monster to find the heir?”

Ron’s mouth opened and closed as he groped for an answer to her question.

“Because that’s  _suicide,”_ Ron said finally, staring at her as if he was more than a little concerned about her sanity. “Even if the monster hasn’t already gone back into hibernation, we are talking about a monster which can turn people to _stone._ A monster that, may I add, has apparently already killed at least once before. A monster that managed to somehow knock out a _ghost.”_

Hermione swallowed at Ron’s words, but was slowly nodding at Harry’s suggestion. “But we’re not getting anywhere like this. Harry’s right - every time we get close to an answer, we find a new piece of contradictory evidence. First, we thought it was Dobby’s owner - then it wasn’t. Then, we thought it was a legacy pureblood - except all the ones we eliminated in that search don’t fit the new information of it being a female Gryffindor. And now, none of the pureblood female Gryffindors work- we’ve hit a dead end, Ron.”

Ron looked between the two girls, and Harry had a feeling that he was seriously wondering when he became the least foolhardy of the three of them. Harry was wondering it herself. “What part,” he said, finally, “of being _turned to stone_ isn’t a clear enough warning for you?!”

“We don’t have to go hunting for it!” Hermione argued, “We just need to focus less on the heir, and more on the monster. That’s where we’re going wrong. And we have already been through more yearbooks and genealogy texts than I thought I’d ever go through in a lifetime - what is a few grimoires?”

“And what if we find out what it is?” Ron said almost immediately, “What then? We’re no closer to the heir, just closer to knowing exactly which beast Slytherin decided to hide in a school that can turn people to stone and live for a thousand years!”

“We do what we’ve been doing all year!” Hermione snapped, before lowering her voice considerably as several heads turned their way. She took a breath. “If we narrow it down enough, if we find out what it is - we might find out how to kill it. Then, we tell Dumbledore what we know, and _he_ goes after the monster. Not us.”

Ron broke their staring contest first. “I need you two to promise you won’t go after it,” he said after a beat, “because I can see this going really wrong. Like, _last year_ wrong. First,” he said, ticking one finger up, “we are assuming we find the monster. This monster - whatever it is - is doubtless a millennia or so old, and is being controlled by an intelligent human being. We then have to avoid suspicion for long enough to figure out how it can be killed - _if it can be killed,_ because this thing clearly has a lifespan and a half - and then tell Dumbledore what we think. And we might still be wrong - we were wrong about Snape last year, as much as I hate to admit it. No running off to any hidden chambers or fighting any beasts. At least,” he said, “not without telling each other first.”

“Ron,” Harry said seriously, “you just did an incredible impression of Percy.”

He shuddered, and stuck his tongue out at her in protest.

“But you’re in?” Hermione pressed him.

Ron ran a hand through his hair. “Of course I’m bloody in,” the boy muttered after a moment, “I know you two would do it anyway.”

* * *

 

There are more magical creatures than one would think that could petrify somebody. The most famous, or rather infamous, example being a Gorgon - but they were essentially human women who had been cursed with the Medusa enchantment. Whilst their hair was made of snakes, and their gaze turned any living creature to stone, they had a human lifespan, and wouldn’t make it a hundred years, let alone a thousand.

The cockatrice was another example - they sounded a little ridiculous, as two legged dragons with chicken’s heads, but Harry knew that she really, really did not want to meet one. Ever. Every pore of the thing was deadly - it’s gaze, it’s touch, it’s breath. It could petrify if you didn’t meet its eyes dead on. It was out too though, as it could only live in desert climates. “You’ll be fine if you ever meet one though, Ron,” she said with forced levity after Hermione had stopped reading the entry.

“Huh?” The white faced boy said.

“Apparently the only animal able to withstand its gaze is a weasel.”

If Madam Pince had not been staring at them very hard, as if waiting for them to give her an excuse to kick them out, Harry has a feeling Ron would have thrown something at her.

* * *

 

They hit a bit of a dead spot after that, although Harry learned more about magical creatures in a matter of months than some of the NEWT students did in four years. “I don’t know whether or not to take Care of Magical Creatures,” Ron said as he fretted over which subjects to take for their third year electives. “On the one hand, Charlie and Bill both loved it, and it’d be dead useful… but I’m not sure if after all this I want to hear about another magical creature ever again.”

“I’m taking it,” Harry said, trying to sound more decisive than she felt, “even if we don’t figure out what the monster is, I don’t want all this work to have gone to waste. I may as well get an OWL out of it.”

Hermione raised an eyebrow at her. Her bookish friend had, of course, decided that she was going to take all of the possible electives. Two minimum were required, and taking four was considered going overboard. Hermione did not care about going overboard.

“Fine,” Ron grouched, and put an X in the box. “I’ll take that and… muggle studies?” He looked up at Hermione.

“What?” she asked, confused.

“Well,” Ron said, shrugging his shoulders, “you _are_ a muggleborn, and we _are_ soulmates. I figured that it’d be good to find out more about the muggle world, if you’re not bothered-”

Hermione was beaming. “Ron,” she said, before throwing her arms around the pureblood boy, “that is possibly the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Ron coloured, and he looked around nervously, as if expecting the twins to appear out of thin air and start teasing him. When no family members materialised, he smiled sheepishly, and to her amusement Harry noticed that the top of his ears were turning red. “So, you approve?”

“Of course,” Hermione said. Decisively, Ron put his second _X_ in the Muggle Studies box.

“I’m not doing muggle studies,” Harry said, “I grew up in the Muggle world, so I don’t need it. Maybe Divination? It couldn’t hurt knowing what’s coming in the future if every year is going to be like this.”

“Fred and George say that’s a really easy class,” Ron said, “if you don’t ‘see’ anything in your inner eye, or whatever, you can just make something up.”

Hermione looked scandalised.

“What about Arithmancy?” Her other friend suggested.

Harry shuddered at the suggestion. She still had far too fresh a memory of her primary school maths teacher, Mrs Halliwell, who was more of a slave driver than a teacher. “Nope.” She said, “Definitely not.”

“Ancient Runes?”

“When will I actually use them?”

“Just do Divination,” Ron whispered, “it’s an easy O.”

Hermione rolled her eyes. “What am I do to with you two?” She bemoaned, as Harry put her second _X_ in the Divination box.

* * *

When Harry wasn’t in the library, she was in the air. Wood’s practices had become more bearable as the weather improved, and more often than not Harry would finish practice drier than she was when she started. Oliver himself was in better spirits as well - Slytherin, on their Nimbus Two Thousand and Ones, had been their biggest competition for the cup, but after the disaster of the bludger at the Slytherin-Gryffindor match, the win had been forfeited to Gryffindor on account of the Slytherins tampering with the bludger.

The fact that Harry knew very well that they hadn’t done so didn’t compel her to tell Madam Hooch. She was a Gryffindor, not a Puff. And it was very worth it to know that in one way or another, Dobby was getting revenge on his family - Draco Malfoy walked around looking alternately miserable and furious. He, like the rest of the Slytherin team, had been suspended for the rest of the year. Plus, Flint was said to have interrogated each and every member of his team to find out who was - quote, ‘dumb enough to pull something so obvious’ - and wasn’t best pleased when every single person claimed their ignorance of the matter. Suspicion immediately thus fell on Malfoy, who was known to hate Harry both by association of being Ron’s best mate and kicking him in the family jewels, and who was the newest member of the team - all the rest having played for years with no tampered bludgers in sight.

“This is almost as good as getting him expelled for being the heir would have been,” Ron said as Malfoy sat alone at the Slytherin table, with only Crabbe and Goyle beside him. Even Parkinson had distanced herself for the moment. “ _Almost.”_

Now that the Slytherins were essentially dead in the water - their team now made entirely of brand new players that hadn’t even been reserves before, thus weren’t marred by the ‘bludger incident’ - Wood had cheered up a lot. He didn’t cut down on practices, but he did cut down on his lectures, much to the delight of Harry and her team mates. The exception being, of course, the morning of a match.

“The conditions are perfect!” he raved at breakfast, piling an extra egg or sausage on someone’s plate when he thought they hadn’t eaten enough. He, however, was nibbling on a piece of toast, the absolute hypocrite. “We should be able to absolutely thrash the Hufflepuffs - I think they’ve only been practicing _weekly_ from what I can tell-”

“ _Weekly,”_ Fred said dreamily, “can you imagine?”

George took a look at Wood’s raised eyebrow, and made the wise choice to say nothing. As the captain looked away from her, Harry took the opportunity to push a few of her sausages and hash browns onto Ron’s plate. Her friend shot her a quick thumbs up as he speared a bratwurst with enthusiasm.

Harry was feeling pretty good, all in all - Oliver’s drills had made her leaner and stronger than she thought she’d ever been before. The Hufflepuffs, whilst a good team, had no particular stand out players.

Of course, that was before she heard the voice for a third time.

_Kill this time… let me rip… tear…_

Instead of freezing up and rushing out of the hall like before, Harry reached over and gripped Ron’s wrist. His head snapped around to look at her. “The voice,” she said in a strangled whisper.

Ron’s freckles stood out starkly on his white face. “You’re sure?”

Harry nodded mutely, her lips drawn into a tight line.

At that moment, Hermione looked up from her _Introduction to Ancient Runes,_ and blinked at the worried looks Harry and Ron were trading. “What is it?” She said at a normal volume. Paranoid, Harry’s eyes swept along the Gryffindor table, lingering on the female students that they hadn’t been able to rule out on blood status or age - none of them were looking in their direction, or acting at all out of the ordinary. Lavender was plaiting Parvati’s hair, Alicia and Angelina were valiantly trying to finish the huge servings Wood had put before them.

Satisfied, Harry looked back to Hermione. “I heard the voice again,” she told her.

Hermione jerked in her seat, and her eyes locked with Harry’s. “ _Now_?” she hissed, her tone urgent. Harry nodded stiffly.

Unaware of the mood, Oliver reached over and heaped another helping of baked beans on Harry’s plate. “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day! Got to keep your strength up!”

Harry shovelled a forkful of beans in her mouth to satisfy him. Nodding to himself, Oliver withdrew. When she swallowed, her throat felt like sandpaper. “What do we do?” Ron said, apparently having the same idea as her and counting all the girls under suspicion.

Trembling, Harry shrugged. She felt utterly helpless.

“That can’t be right,” Hermione breathed, and Harry turned to her, relieved that at least one of them had an idea what was going on.

“What can’t be right?” She asked.

“They’re all here,” Hermione said urgently, “I’ve counted them. Twice. Every single pureblood female is _here_ , in this room.”

Ron looked at her, horrorstruck. “But if they’re all here, who’s-”

 _I am coming!_ The voice slid into the back of Harry’s mind like a cancer. _Coming to kill! Coming to feast!_

“It’s happening right now,” Harry whispered, “the monster, it’s hunting-”

“Everybody eaten?” Oliver called, beaming. His crusts lay abandoned on his plate. Not waiting for a response, he clapped his hands together. “Right, let’s go!” Fred groaned dramatically from the other side of the table, but rose, along with the rest of the team.

“Everyone will be at the Quidditch match,” Hermione breathed, so quietly Harry almost missed it, “the tactics are the same. Find a way to pick somebody off whilst everyone else is away-”

“Problem, Harry?” Wood asked. Suddenly, Harry realised she was the only person on the team still sitting.

“I, er-”

“Now I know that you’ll be a bit nervous after what happened last time, but Madam Hooch has assured me she’s taken measures that it doesn’t happen again. Only way to overcome a fear is to face it, so get back on the horse! Or the broom, in this situation.”

 _Oliver, you quidditch obsessed numbskull._ Even in her mind, the insult sounded fond. “It’s not that,” she stammered, “I just- I have a bit of stomach ache.”

Harry hadn’t seriously expected this excuse to work. But at the words ‘stomach ache’ Wood reared back, his eyes going as round as golf balls. “Stomach ache?” He said faintly, before swallowing. “Right. Okay. You- er, stay here until your stomach settles. Just make sure you’re in the locker rooms before eleven.”

Before Harry even had a chance to respond, Wood fled.

“I can’t believe that worked,” she said to herself, before turning back to her friends and the matter at hand.

“-we have to tell Dumbledore,” Hermione was saying, her cheeks pink, “he’s the strongest wizard in the whole of the UK, possibly the world - he’ll know what to do.”

“And what happens when we tell him?” Ron shoots back, “Oh, _how_ do we know this Professor Dumbledore? Well, there was a _voice_ in the walls that only Harry can hear-”

Unexpectedly, Hermione’s eyes went wide, before she slapped her forehead. “I’m an idiot,” she whispered to herself, and then louder- “I need to go check something.” She stood to go, but Ron reached out for her hand and tugged her back down.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he hissed, “I thought we just established that the monster is out there, looking for isolated muggleborns!”

“I won’t be isolated in the library, Ronald,” she huffed, but stayed sitting.

“I’m lost,” Harry said, looking between the two of them in confusion, “what happened in the last ten seconds that makes you an idiot?”

Hermione sighed, and began talking with her hands, a surefire sign she was exasperated, “The voice - we agree it belongs to Slytherin’s monster, yes?” Harry and Ron nodded. “But only Harry can hear it?” Two nods again. “Slytherin was one of the founders of Hogwarts, but he was famous for other things- which were?”

Harry hadn’t realised they would be getting a test instead of an explanation. “I dunno, Mione, nobody pays attention in History of Magic-”

“Hating muggles and muggleborns,” Hermione said with a glare, ticking the points off on her fingers, “being pioneer of mind magic, one of the first ever wandmakers, founding Hogwarts and being a _parseltongue_.” At the blank looks on Ron and Harry’s faces, she threw her arms up in the air in frustration. “It’s a snake!” She exclaimed. “Slytherin’s monster is a snake!”

“Oh god,” Harry said, her eyes immediately focusing on the large serpent in a quartered section of the Hogwarts crest that was hung up behind the staff table. “Oh my god, we’re so stupid.”

Beside her, Ron put his head in his hands. “My Aunt Muriel was right,” he said through his palms, voice muffled, “I really am a dunce.”

Hermione waved away their self-disgust. “I should have got it too,” she said, “I mean - what was it I said even last year? With the potions puzzle guarding the philosopher’s stone? The strongest wizard in the world would have been stopped in his tracks if he had to rely on logical reasoning? The wizards are rubbing off on me,” she said, sounding faintly horrified with herself.

“The reason only Slytherin’s heirs can control the monster,” Harry said slowly, “is because only his heirs speak parseltongue. Oh my god, we knew that it was a talent of his and his heir’s ever since the duelling club - you two before, even.”

After a few moments of trying to take in fully just how obtuse they were, Ron spoke.

“But Mione,” he said, “snakes don’t live for a thousand years. Even the magical ones only have a few extra decades-”

“I bet there’s at least one that does,” Hermione said grimly. “So we go to the library, and we look for magical snakes. I bet it won’t take too long now we know what we’re looking for.” At that moment, the first bell rang, indicating it was quarter to eleven - fifteen minutes before the quidditch match began.

“I’ll say I’ve got a bug,” Harry says instantly at the reminder she’s supposed to be on the pitch in less than twenty minutes, “Oliver bought it the first time.”

“He thought you had your period,” Hermione corrects her, “that’s why he was so keen to get away. But he wouldn’t accept it for an excuse to pass up the match.”

“My _what?”_

Hermione couldn’t seem to stop herself from rolling her eyes. “I _cannot_ give you the sex talk right now, Harry! I only got it myself over the summer!”

Harry blanched. Ron stared into his pumpkin juice and looked to be trying very hard not to hear anything or meet either of the girl’s eyes.

“But we need to stop it!” Harry cried, “Wood will understand when we catch the heir-”

“Me and Ron are going to the library,” Hermione said clearly, her expression set, “ _You_ are going to go out there, catch the snitch and finish the match as quickly as humanly possible. Ron’s a pureblood - if he’s with me, I’ll be fine. By that time, we’ll hopefully know exactly what the beast is, how to kill it, and _all three of us_ will go to Dumbledore.”

Harry scowled, but had to admit it was a pretty good plan.

“Fine,” she bit out, “go, now.”

Harry’s mind was still back at the castle as she changed mechanically in the locker rooms, Oliver giving her an excited grin as she did so. She barely heard Lee Jordan’s commentary as they flew out onto the pitch, her muscle memory of training carrying her through as she got into position high above the pitch. On the ground, Oliver and the Hufflepuff captain were going through the tradition of shaking hands a little too hard to be friendly. Harry strained her ears towards the castle, both wanting and not-wanting to hear the voice - the _snake_ \- again.

Madam Hooch released the balls, and let them soar into the air. Neither of the bludgers seemed particularly attracted to Harry, although she hadn’t expected them to be - Dobby had promised, after all. It was still a relief. Her eyes scanned the pitch automatically, but she didn’t see any glint of gold. For now, she was happy to observe - Angelina had possession of the quaffle, she was passing to and fro with Katie whilst Alicia bodily blocked the Hufflepuff chasers from intervening.

She was almost starting to relax, when Professor McGonagall’s magically enhanced voice cut through Lee’s usual bias commentary. “This match has been cancelled!” She said, her voice echoing. The stands stopped cheering, and instead began booing and shouting.

The balls hadn’t quite got the memo that the match had been paused, and one of the Hufflepuff beaters got a bludger in the stomach because he hadn’t been paying attention. After that, everyone got off their brooms. Everybody save Wood, that was. He instead flew over to the commentator’s box.

"But, Professor!" he shouted, his voice painfully loud due to the fact he was essentially yelling into a microphone. "We've got to play - the cup - _Gryffindor-_ "

McGonagall ignored him, and carried on speaking into the microphone - but not before she had angled it away from Wood’s protests. “All students are to make their way back to the House common rooms, where their Heads of Houses will give them further information. As quickly as you can, please!"

Harry exchanged confused looks with the rest of her team mates. Her first thought was that Ron and Hermione hadn’t been quick enough, and the snake had struck again. The thought of another petrified body on her hands made Harry’s stomach churn. Slowly, the teams filtered back into their respective locker rooms. “Unbelievable,” Angelina ranted, “I’m not sure if we’re going to get to play a proper match at this rate.”

Once she was back in her normal robes, Harry left - only to be met with Professor McGonagall lying in wait outside the locker rooms. “Potter,” she said, voice clipped, “you had better follow me.”

Behind her, Fred and George also emerged, their hair still wet from showering. “You two as well,” she added.

A feeling of deep foreboding grew in Harry’s gut.

In silence, Harry, the twins and the Deputy Headmistress trooped through the castle. Even Fred and George, the eternal pranksters, seemed to sense that something serious had happened.

Eventually, they stopped outside the hospital wing. Harry’s mouth felt dry as ash. “This will be a bit of a shock,” Professor McGonagall said in a surprisingly gentle to Harry and the twins. “There’s been another attack.” Harry’s throat feels thick. “Another double attack.”

She knows what she’s going to see before she sees it.

The hospital wing is empty, save for the two beds that Harry already knows hold Justin and Colin, and another two nearer the door. A single figure sits by the bed closest to the entrance, bent over the bed and crying. Her red hair is unmistakable, just like the too-short trousers on the boy she’s sobbing over. In the next bed lies a smaller, still form, brown hair settled around her head like a halo. Madam Pomfrey is bending over her, fingers pressed to skin that Harry knows will be as hard as stone.

“Ginn- Ron!” One of the twins, Harry doesn’t really care which, cries and rushes forward, his twin hot on his heels. The girl turns at her brother’s voice, face red and blotchy, and bursts out into more tears.

The twins begin throwing rapid questions at the school healer - why weren’t they informed sooner, did Percy know, did their parents know, how did this happen, when did it happen, how long would the mandrake draught take to brew-

Harry tries to find it in her to cry. She wants to cry. She wants to sob and scream like Ginny, wants to fall apart and have somebody take care of her like Fred and George are taking care of their little sister. But all the support system Harry has is laid out before her, frozen and trapped in their own bodies. She has no parents to be informed, she has no brothers or sisters to fall back on. She has Ron and Hermione - except she doesn’t, anymore.

She is completely, totally, utterly alone.

“Miss Potter?” McGonagall’s voice says, and her body turns automatically. The older witch looks taken aback, looks like she is waiting for Harry to collapse, to self destruct. But that is what children do, and despite her appearance, Harry hasn’t been a child since she found out what the words _Avada Kedavra_ meant. Despite the fact she’s barely five foot tall, and the fact her face still has the babyish softness of a juvenile, Harry has lived long enough and seen enough terrible things to know that crying won’t solve anything.

“I’m okay,” she said to the transfiguration professor, “I need to get some air.”

Without waiting for a reply, she turns on her heel and half sprints out of the hospital wing. Nobody follows her.

She blinks, still half waiting for the tears. But they don’t come - they don’t come. She feels empty, hollow. So she doesn’t cry. She is torn apart with not crying.

Harry doesn’t know quite where she’s walking until she reaches Myrtle’s toilet. She doesn’t announce herself as she normally does, and Myrtle begins to scream “Get out!” when she recognises her.

“Harry?” The ghost says, “What happened?”

“Ron and Hermione,” Harry says, her voice unwavering, void, “they were attacked. They’ve both been petrified.”

Myrtle swoops down, hovers in front of Harry. “But isn’t that good? They were the whole reason you were coming here in the first place. Them and their perfect bond-”

“No!” Harry yells, filled with sudden fury, her heartbeat thumping in her ears, “Is that what you think? Is that who you think I am? They are my friends - my best friends, my only friends. The first friends I ever had! I know you’re sad, Myrtle, I know you died young and you didn’t deserve to, I know your life _sucked,_ I know it wasn’t fair, but that doesn’t mean everyone is miserable like you! Not everyone is as selfish, and vapid, and- you think people didn’t like you because of your looks? Your _pimples?_ Nobody gave a fuck about the way you looked, Myrtle, they cared about your personality - or lack thereof. You’re a stereotypical attention whore - when you didn’t get what you wanted, you cried! You screamed! And you died, and now that’s all you will do for the rest of your fucking existence- you’ll be moaning Myrtle to the day this castle collapses around you-”

Myrtle reaches out, and punches Harry - but ghosts cannot punch, cannot touch. All Harry feels is a terrible, icy coldness that makes her feel like she’s been dunked underwater, and the wetness has made it’s way to her bones. She’s screaming, sobbing incoherently, the water level is rising higher and higher, her feet are soaking wet, but Harry isn’t done.

“Olive Hornby isn’t the reason you’re here, Myrtle! _You_ are the reason you are here! You just got fixated, got stuck on her, and now you’re still flooding bathrooms _at her memory_. Her memory, Myrtle! You could haunt her, haunt her family, crash a huge amount of weddings, but she has won, and you let her! _You let her!”_ Harry’s beginning to feel lightheaded, but she can’t stop now - Myrtle is crying now, and she feels so good, so good that she is hurting like Harry is hurting, but it’s not enough. It’s not enough. “She died an old woman- do you see her ghost here, Myrtle? Do you? She has passed on, and you are still trapped here! You are still trapped here because you are incapable of understanding you have to stand on your own - people will let you down! People will let you down, and you will let them down in turn, even if you don’t mean to, and it’s all your own fault for believing in them! For thinking you-” Harry goes to jab at Myrtle’s chest, making the same mistake Myrtle had made minutes before and forgetting she wasn’t solid. The skin of the finger she had plunged into Myrtle’s spirit cracks at the cold. “-were special, were protected!”

The water has reached Harry’s knees. “How dare you!” Myrtle is howling, the stall doors slamming open and closed, creating currents. The window panes are rattling.

“Why do you haunt this bathroom, Myrtle?” Harry sneers, and Myrtle’s face registers fury. “Did nobody want to see you in the common rooms, look too hard at the tragic, terrible victim that they all really, deep down, wanted gone?”

“You’re wrong,” Myrtle screeched, “You’re wrong! You don’t know anything, you don’t know anything at all-”

 _"WHY?”_ Harry roars. The windows smash. There is somebody knocking, punching, kicking at the other side of the door, but Harry and Myrtle appear to be united in this, united in their desire to rip the other to shreds without outside interference. The door stays shut.

 _“I DIED HERE!”_ Myrtle bellows back, “I was fourteen years old, and I was waiting for it to get better, my parents said bullies always got bored, and I wasn’t a pureblood, nobody cared about the mudblood Murtle, I was crying, and I was alone and then I was _DEAD!”_

“Liar,” Harry snarls, a niggling memory battling to the forefront of her brain that she tries to ignore _(Liar,_ the shade had mocked her, _liar, liar, liar-),_ “I bet you killed yourself. I bet you were too weak to carry on, the final push for attention-”

“I didn’t!” Myrtle screams, and it echoes. _I didn’t! I didn’t!_ “I wanted to live!” _I wanted to live! I wanted to live!_ “There was a boy in here- he must have done it, he must have killed me- I don’t _remember-” I don’t remember, I don’t remember, I don’t remember._

“You were scared to live!” Harry yells back, “You were scared that no one would ever love you, ever want you- I bet you didn’t even have a soulmate-”

“I had one!” Myrtle screams, “I had one! She didn’t-”

Almost as suddenly as it had all started, the water stopped. It was just to Harry’s hips. The stall doors went still. The banging outside continued, but muffled. Harry panted, and finally, finally, something wet and hot slid down her cheek. She didn’t move to wipe the tear away. She wanted to keep it, keep it for as long as she was able - this was proof. Proof she was not a monster. Proof she was not him.

“She didn’t?” Harry asked, her voice hoarse from all the shouting. She fights the urge to knead her forehead.

“Olive Hornby,” Myrtle sobbed, and lifted her translucent school jumper sleeve. There it was - a little difficult to see on greyish, opaque skin, but still there - _get out, nerd. This is our compartment now._ “And I wasn’t hers,” she finished, gulping loudly, “I wasn’t hers. And when I tried to tell her - she thought I was a stalker. She hated me. My soulmate- my soulmate, the one person who was meant to like me, meant to love me, _hated_ me.”

Harry’s own wrist burns.

“I’m sorry, Myrtle,” she says quietly. “I’m sorry.”

At that moment, the door breaks, and the water rushes out the entrance. Harry looks up dully to see Professor Snape’s furious face.

* * *

 

Harry doesn’t really hear the Head of Slytherin’s lecture, or her own head of house’s similar spiel about respect of school property and disgracing herself. She doesn’t notice the loss of fifty house points, or the people that stare at her venomously because of it. She barely notices when Hagrid gets taken out of his little hut in handcuffs, her only thought being that another of her friends was being taken from her, or when Dumbledore vanishes, stripped of his position. It might have something to do with the lack of sleep - every night she slipped out of Gryffindor tower with the cloak, unable to do anything during the day due to the security measures that had been undertaken by the staff after Ron and Hermione had been petrified.

She combs through the library - she hasn’t got Hermione’s brilliant mind, or Ron’s singular focus, but she finds the monster eventually.

_Of the many fearsome beasts and monsters that roam our land, there is none more curious or more deadly than the Basilisk, known also as the King of Serpents. This snake, which may reach gigantic size and live many hundreds of years, is born from a chicken's egg, hatched beneath a toad. Its methods of killing are most wondrous, for aside from its deadly and venomous fangs, the Basilisk has a murderous stare, and all who are fixed with the beam of its eye shall suffer instant death. Spiders flee before the Basilisk, for it is their mortal enemy, and the Basilisk flees only from the crowing of the rooster, which is fatal to it._

Below that passage, there was a drawing of a colossal snake, and beneath that, in handwriting that Harry was almost completely and utterly certain was Hermione’s was written just one word: _pipes._

If Harry hadn’t been too sleep deprived and miserable to care, she would have been astounded that Hermione had found in herself to deface a book. Madam Pince would have kittens if she ever found out.

To her dismay, she discovered that every rooster on the grounds had been killed months before from Professor Sprout, who was taking care of Hagrid’s animals and garden whilst he was in prison. “Roosters,” she heard the kindly woman mutter to herself as she walked away, “the girl has two friends in the hospital wing, and she asks about roosters…”

If Harry could tell anyone about the chamber, she wouldn’t have sounded so insane, but she couldn’t - she had gone Ron and Hermione involved, and now they were little better than garden statues. The only person she trusted, who was powerful enough to face down the heir and it’s monster, was Dumbledore, and he had been placed on probation.

No, it was just Harry now. Harry, and the monster.

The next day, she feigns illness - it’s not hard at all, considering the lack of sleep. With all four petrified students, one petrified cat and a dead-to-the-world ghost, Madam Pomfrey just recommended bedrest as opposed to going to the hospital wing. Then, when the tower is deserted, completely ignoring her moral compass - which sounded a lot like Hermione, as it turns out - she slips out of bed, and opens up Lavender’s bedside table. Lipsticks, nail polish, a little book with a heart on it. Nothing. Next, she goes through the drawers next to the blonde girl’s bed - a lot of purple and pink, a few nighties and days of the week knickers, but no diary.

Next, she moves onto Parvati’s stuff. No joy. She leaves the second year dorm at that point, and goes to the next floor up - the third year dorm. She doesn’t know any third years particularly well, or their blood status, so she searches them all indiscriminately. Nothing. She keeps going up, through the fourth year dorms, the fifth years. When she gets to the sixth year dorms still empty handed, she begins to panic. What if the diary isn’t here? What if it was just another misdirection - what if there was another way into the Gryffindor girl’s dorms other than being a Gryffindor girl?

The seventh year dorm is empty. Harry is overcome for a moment with the urge to scream. She had been so sure - find the diary, find the thief. Find the thief, find the heir. Find the heir, end the attacks.

But there was one dormitory she hadn’t searched yet. Aware time was ticking on, and that some Gryffindors returned back to the tower at lunch, Harry practically flew back down to the bottom of the tower, skidding to a stop at the front of the first year dorms. They had counted out the first years at the very beginning, for good reason - they were too young. Too young to find the chamber, too young to have the power to control the beast. And the only female pureblood firstie was Ginny Weasley.

She goes to the bedside table first - empty, at least of anything useful. Next, the drawers - as nothing appears, her panic begins to rise again. She begins throwing the top layers over her shoulder- and stops. Stares.

There is blood on Ginny’s clothes. Feathers too. The red stain was hard and dry, and obviously buried deep for a reason, perhaps to try and stop the house-elves finding it. Jumpers, wooly tights, long sleeved shirts - winter clothes.

The roosters had been killed in winter.

The rest of the drawers were clean, and Harry turned back to the bed. If she was Ginny - she was Ginny and she had to hide something. She had to stop anyone from finding it. Slowly, Harry walked over to the bed. “Please,” she offers up a prayer to anyone who is listening, and lifts the pillow.

There it sits, in all it’s glory - fifty years old, the black leather still gleaming, the golden lettering unmarked. Harry takes a huge breath in.

She picks it up, hand a vice around the tightly bound pages. Ginny. Ginny, Ron’s little sister, was the heir of Slytherin. _Ginny._

Oh shit, Ginny.

The redhead stood in the doorway of the room, her eyes trained on Harry, or perhaps on the book in her grip. “It’s over, Ginny,” Harry said, sounding a lot surer than she felt, “it’s over.”

“ _No."_ Ginny said, and Harry was already half passed out from an unheard spell when she realised that Ginny hadn’t spoken - she had _hissed._

* * *

Harry hurt. Harry hurt everywhere. The first thing she was aware of, really aware of, was the hardness of the stone beneath her, the gritty feel of it against her cheek. Then it was the cold - it was in every breath, every bone. Third came the pain - not that the pain had not been there before, but she just hadn’t noticed, but once she noticed - there was no forgetting. Her teeth felt like they’d been shaken loose, her head was pounding, her back was twisted, her neck crooked. She let out a moan of pain, and lifted her head.

She was sprawled at the end of a very long, dark chamber, lit only by the odd flickering candle. Above her, a long face stared down disapprovingly, haunting and huge. There was a thick layer of algae over everything - no, no, that wasn’t algae. Those were snake carvings, each that vivid green of fresh moss, unmoving but with eyes that seemed terribly alive.

Behind her, somebody tapped their foot.

Reacting, Harry immediately went for her wand - and found her pocket empty. Of course - Ginny wouldn’t have left her with her wand. Either way, she thought bitterly, she could fight her off. Ginny was a first year, and whilst Harry wasn’t particularly big for her age, she felt like she could take her.

But when Harry turned around, scrambling to her feet, she didn’t see Ginny. Instead, there was a boy she hadn’t seen before - or had she? There was something strangely familiar about the face, the curl of the hair, the keen gaze.

“Who-” Harry said, before her voice broke, “Who are you?” She tried again, “Where- where’s Ginny?”

The boy smiled. It was beautiful and terrible all at once. He looked like one of those boys on magazine covers that Aunt Petunia flicked through sometimes - like he was too perfectly formed to be real.

“You know who I am, Harriet.”

And with the voice, she did.

“Tom- Tom Riddle?”

In answer the boy smirked. “Well done. Top of the class.”

“You can’t be,” Harry said after a beat, “you’re- you’re not _real._ The real you would be an old man by now. You’re- are you a ghost?”

Immediately, Harry knew her guess was wrong. She had known ghosts. Ghosts were pearly, and ethereal, and transparent. Riddle… he wasn’t quite _right -_ something hung about him that she couldn’t place. But his skin was peachy, his eyes dark, his feet planted firmly on the ground.

“A memory,” Riddle corrected, “preserved in a diary for fifty years.”

Harry had no idea that was possible. But she knows so little of magic, so little of this world- “Where’s Ginny?” She asked again, “Tom, you must know - we’re in the Chamber of Secrets because of her. _She’s_ the heir of Slytherin. _She’s_ the one that’s been petrifying people.”

“Oh,” Tom said, with a sunny smile, “I know that. I told her to.”

Harry freezes. She fancies she can actually feel the blood in her veins running cold. She swallowed hard, and took a large step back, half afraid her legs would fail her at any moment. Riddle actually laughed at that.

“You can’t outrun me, little girl,” Riddle said smirking at her, and he took a step forward, equal to the same one Harry had taken. Throwing caution to the wind, Harry gave into her fear and ran, sprinted. Her shoes smacked against the damp floor, and she dived for the first exit she saw - but there was just another chamber, identical to the last save there was no statue of Slytherin. She took random lefts, right, didn’t dare stop running as Riddle’s laughter seemed to echo from every wall. She took a final turn, and found herself in the first chamber, but Riddle was nowhere in sight.

A wand point suddenly dug into the back of her neck, and Harry stiffened. “Nice and easy now,” Riddle said gently, “forward, forward.”

Rendered dumb by fear, Harry did as she was told, until Riddle had herded her back into the centre of the chamber, exactly where she started. “You see?” The boy - the memory - told her. “It’s so much easier to just do what I tell you to.”

“What do you want?” Harry asked, and she could feel her brain shutting itself down like it did after Ron and Hermione’s petrification. She stared up at Riddle through lidded eyes.

“Everything.” Riddle said instantaneously. There was something in his face, the way he turned-

“You- I’ve seen your face,” Harry said.

“Oh?” Riddle said pleasantly.

“In one of the yearbooks. You were-”

 _So no matter how much this guy looks like a pureblood,_ Ron’s voice from a half forgotten memory said, ringing through Harry’s mind like a town crier, _his name isn’t pureblood at all. Very muggle. Heir of Slytherin, who famously hated muggles, isn’t going to have a muggle surname._

“You’re the heir of Slytherin.”

In response, Tom bowed. He looked very pleased. “Not just a pretty face, are you?” He reached out to touch her, and Harry reared back. Miraculously, he withdrew, and continued circling instead.

“You framed Hagrid.” All the pieces began slotting into place. “You didn’t want Hogwarts to close- you would have to go back to the orphanage. You need a scapegoat.” Harry’s voice became thick as she realised exactly how badly Riddle had screwed over the gentle half-giant, “You… he was expelled. His wand was snapped. He's in _Azkaban_.” She felt her features twist into hatred, “Because of _you_.”

“It wouldn’t have worked if he hadn’t been so wholly unsuitable,” the memory taunted her, “it was enough he was a halfbreed really. But the boy had no manners, no sense, went off gallivanting with trolls and raising monsters in the dungeons, always in trouble, bottom of the class- who would believe him over me? Poor Tom Riddle, parentless but so brave, so clever, so bright, model student, prefect… they _wanted_ it to be Hagrid. They wanted an excuse to dispose of him like the trash he was.”

Harry’s hands curled into fists at her sides. “You’re a monster,” she hissed.

“Maybe,” Riddle smiled mockingly, “but at least I’m better than an animal.”

Flooded with rage, Harry lunged for Riddle with her bare fists - she didn’t even cover half the space between them before she was thrown backwards, and ropes curled around her. She had the most horrible feeling of deja vu after the previous year.

“You fucking bas-” Another flick of Harry’s stolen wand, and her vocal chords stopped working. She wanted to scream and rage, but instead she was bound and mute.

“You kiss your mother with that mouth?” Riddle asked, before a cruel smile overcame his face, “Oh, no, how unkind of me - she’s dead.”

Harry screamed silently in rage.

Riddle, in a rather unexpected move, sat down on the wet ground beside where Harry was lying. “Oh none of that,” he tutted, and reached out to touch her scar. Harry flinched, waited for the pain that she had begun to associate with the mark, but there was nothing. Well, no - there was not nothing. There was… warmth. It felt like she had bolts of painless lightning shooting down her skin, like she had swallowed a gentle sun.

The memory too looked surprised for a split second, before his expression became infinitely more calculating. Absentmindedly, he traced the mark as Harry tried to wriggle away - not because it felt bad, but because it felt _good_. She didn’t want him to make her feel good. She much preferred it when he was threatening her, and she got to scream at him. Now, all was silent. Now, all was still.

“Where was I?” The boy said to himself, before smiling cruelly. “Ah, yes, the framing the oaf. I’ll admit that even I was surprised how well the plan worked. I thought someone _must_ realize that Hagrid couldn't possibly be the Heir of Slytherin. It had taken me five whole years to find out everything I could about the Chamber of Secrets and discover the secret entrance... as though Hagrid had the brains, or the power!”

He looked down at her, as if studying her. “And I suppose,” he said, stroking her forehead still, “somebody did. Just five decades too late. Oh, Dumbledore was never fully convinced, but I think it was more a feeling than anything concrete, otherwise he would have had me up before the Wizengamot before I could say _Basilisk_. Still, he kept an annoying close eye on me after that - I knew it wouldn't be safe to open the Chamber again while I was still at school. But I wasn't going to waste those long years I'd spent searching for it. I decided to leave behind a diary, preserving my sixteen-year-old self in its pages, in the hope that one day, with luck, I would be able to lead another in my footsteps, and finish Salazar Slytherin's noble work."

Harry’s face twitched. The memory closed off, and he waved his wand. A pressure that had been sitting on Harry’s throat disappeared. “What’s so funny, girl?”

“You failed,” Harry taunted him with a sneer, “nobody died. You couldn’t even kill a cat. So much for Slytherin’s noble work - you’re a failure. Just like the last time. In a few hours the Mandrake Draught will be ready and everyone who was petrified will be back to themselves-”

"Haven't I already told you," said Riddle quietly, "that killing Mudbloods doesn't matter to me anymore? For many months now, my new target has been _you_."

Harry’s mirth evaporated, and she stared at him, waiting for the rest. Waiting for another sentence, a punchline. But there was nothing. Just Riddle's dark eyes and cruel face. Once he felt Harry was appropriately terrified, Riddle continued.

“Imagine how angry I was when the next time my diary was opened, it was Ginny who was writing to me, not you. She saw you with the diary, you see, and panicked. What if you found out how to work it, and I repeated all her secrets to you? What if, even worse, I told you who'd been strangling roosters? So the foolish little brat waited until your dormitory was deserted and stole it back. But I knew what I must do. It was clear to me that you were on the trail of Slytherin's heir. From everything Ginny had told me about you, I knew you would go to any lengths to solve the mystery - particularly if one of your best friends was attacked - I didn’t mean to the get Weasley boy, but he was a nice bonus… I knew you’d be onto her, sooner or later, you see. Alone in the world, obsessive. And how right I was.”

Harry’s stomach flipped over at the confirmation that she’d played right into Riddle’s hands. “Why me?” She finally managed to choke out, “I’m not- I’m not anything special-”

“I can see that,” Riddle snapped. “So the question remains - how did you, a tiny little girl with no exceptional magical ability or talent - defeat the greatest wizard of all time? How did you escape with just a scar-” Riddle’s fingers pressed down on the wound, and Harry felt an echo the familiar pain return, “when Lord Voldemort’s powers were destroyed? Ginny read all the storybooks,” Tom mocks, “told me about it all when I showed interest. But none of them explained it to me. _How?”_

It must have been a trick of the light, but for a moment Harry thought she could see a hint of red in his otherwise black eyes.

“Why do you care?” Harry asked. Only Ron and Hermione knew about her soulmate. She wouldn’t be telling a memory of a madman. “Voldemort was after your time.”

“Voldemort,” Riddle said, “is my past, my present, and future, Harriet Potter…” He drew his wand, and began to make burning letters hover in the air that spelled out a name: TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE. Then he waved Harry’s own wand, and the letters rearranged. Harry’s throat closed up as she read the anagram, as she understood, finally, painfully: I AM LORD VOLDEMORT.

“You,” she said hoarsely.

“Me,” he smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. "It was a name I was already using at Hogwarts, to my most intimate friends only, of course. You think I was going to use my filthy Muggle father's name forever? I, in whose veins runs the blood of Salazar Slytherin himself, through my mother's side? I, keep the name of a foul, common Muggle, who abandoned me even before I was born, just because he found out his wife was a witch? No, Harry - I fashioned myself a new name, a name I knew wizards everywhere would one day fear to speak, when I had become the greatest sorcerer in the world!”

Harry’s mind was racing, scrounging up pieces of Riddle’s monologue to paint a picture of the madman, of the other half of her soul. Muggle father, pureblood mother- or at least a Slytherin descendent. That was why he could speak to snakes, and why in turn she could- a half-blood like her, _like her_ …

She hadn’t just seen his face in a diary, in a yearbook. She had seen his face in person - horribly twisted, yes, but the same face. The same man. The face in the mirror, looking over her shoulder - not this young, no, but not too old either. The man Voldemort was before he died.

Her wrist is burning, and she can’t help the tears that are rising, and her scar is beginning to thrum with that all too familiar pain, and she is almost grateful - she had spoken to him, spoken to her own soulmate, and she hadn’t even known. And he didn’t know either, she realised, as he looked at her expectantly. “How did you defeat Lord Voldemort, girl? You don’t have to die here.”

“I guess,” she says, tasting the words, knowing what she has to do, knowing she has to provoke him into attacking again, “I’m just better than you in every way.”

_“Crucio!”_

Harry doesn’t recognise the spell, but she knows she never wants to feel it again - there are thousands of white hot knives, stabbing every molecule of her, she is on fire, she being torn apart, she is being ripped to pieces, she can’t bear it, she can’t bear it-

It stops, but Harry’s body still shakes with the force of the pain. She looks up, half expecting to see Riddle on the ground as well, hopes to at least, but he is standing, perfectly poised and unruffled. _Not him_ , she realises, _not him. A memory of him._

Her one and only plan is destroyed in that instant.

“How?” Riddle snaps, and Harry can’t help the thrill of fear that runs through her.

“I don’t remember,” she says, but she can’t meet Riddle’s eyes. She was never a very good liar.

“Tell me!” he roars, taking her chin in his hand. She tries to shake him off, but she’s still bound, and the power is coming off of him in waves now, thick and fast and dark and powerful. She stays silent, but only by biting her own tongue so hard that it begins to bleed.

She wants to tell him, she realises. She wants to bring his world out from under him. Wants to see in his face, his hated, perfect face what she saw the year before, but hadn’t had time to appreciate - the dawning realisation, the horror, the disgust. She wants to ruin him. She wants to ruin him the way he ruined her.

He shakes his head, and raises her wand, and she flinches - she’s expecting _Crucio_ again, but instead he says “ _Legilimens.”_

The only way Harry can explain what happens after that is like she’s being shown a film of her own life - but there’s no end to the screen, there’s no pause or off switch, and somebody is holding her eyelids open forcing her to watch. She’s two years old, and Aunt Petunia locks her in the cupboard for the first time. She’s four years old, and Dudley is pinching her under the table. She’s seven years old, and she’s running away from Dudley’s gang, and then she’s popped onto a roof. She’s nine years old and her Aunt Petunia cut off all her hair, but it grew back overnight. She’s eleven years old and Hagrid is breaking down the door and telling her she’s magic.

The flip show goes more detailed now. The visit to Diagon Alley - _no!_ Harry wants to cry, not that! The Gringotts cart, the people in the street, Hedwig outside the window, the first meeting with Draco Malfoy in Madam Malkin’s and- and-

She doesn’t want him to see this. But she is not strong enough to stop him. Ollivander, handing her a wand and saying _its brother gave you that scar,_ and she loves it, loves it completely. And she’s in the Leaky Cauldron, a butterbeer moustache on her upper lip, and she asks the question - “ _What does Avada Kedavra mean?_ ”

That’s shocked him, that’s surprised him, even, not just Hagrid but the man playing the film. It pauses on the look of surprise on Hagrid’s face, skips back, before the letters, before magic, before anything. She’s small, about five, and she’s tugging on her year two teacher’s skirt after a lesson on soul marks and soulmates: _Mrs Hume, what does Avada Kedavra mean?_

She is a pretty woman, and she frowns, guesses. _Sounds like a foreign language dearie,_ she pats her on the head, because this was before the Dursleys had managed to convince everyone at school that she was a freak and they thought she was just a little girl, like all the others: _maybe check in the library?_

Little Whinging’s library is large and the foreign books are elusive, but she searches, and as she searches she wonders if her soulmate will come and rescue her from the Dursleys like in all the fairytales; if her soulmate will just look at her and know, _it’s you, it’s you, you are the one for me_ , and she peels back her ribbon to take the smallest peek at the words written there in a very grownup, smooth hand, the words she has been waiting for her whole life-

The film stops, finally. Harry is back on the slimy chamber floor, and she doesn’t know if her face is wet from the floor or her own tears. She looks up, panting, and Tom Riddle’s face is everything she had hoped it would be. Stricken, confused, angry, upset - it’s good enough, she decides, good enough for now. Almost worth remembering it all for.

The moment is over as soon as it came. He sees her looking up at him and snarls, waves her wand, and the ropes are gone. She doesn’t know why he’s done this, but she doesn’t question it and staggers to her feet, putting a healthy distance between them. “What was that?” she asks finally, “How did you…”

His eyes on her face are still violating, but curious. “We are one soul in two, after all,” he says after a moment. “There are no secrets between us. All you are is mine. Every memory, every thought in your pretty little head…”

“I think we know that’s not true.” She said, sounding braver than she felt.

“It will be.” He sounds certain. Sure. _He has been wrong before,_ Harry reminds herself. _He will be wrong again._

“ _Never_ ,” Harry said vehemently, “I don’t want you. I don’t choose you.”

“This has never been about _choice,”_ Riddle says with a laugh, high and cruel. Harry has heard that laugh in her nightmares.

“Oh, you chose to ride along on the back of Quirrell’s skull then?” Harry asks, “You chose to hide away from the world for a decade? You chose to watch your followers forsake you, your name dragged through the mud as you failed to kill a _baby-_ ”

“I didn’t know then,” Riddle says, not rising to the bait as Harry had hoped. But of course, he knows her plan now. He knows everything. Hopelessness rises in her. “I know now.”

He moves faster than should be possible - this version of him is sixteen years old, tall and strong and Harry is a small twelve year old girl. She kicks and flails and punches blindly as he wraps her in his arms, but he won’t let her go. _Why won’t he burn?_ she thinks desperately, _why can he not just burn like Quirrell did?_

“I have no intent to harm you, little one,” he says, as if reading her thoughts, “I understand now. I understand it all. The only special thing about you... is me.”

“You wish,” Harry snaps, and he sighs, as if she’s boring him.

“You’re a determined little thing, aren’t you? _Immobulous."_ Harry’s arms lock to her sides, and Riddle puts her down on the ground gently. As if they are not still mortal enemies. As if a stupid little detail like a soul mark should make a difference when he has murdered her parents and petrified her friends.

“I hate you,” Harry says to him as he comes to her side and raises her arm up, and she has no control over the limb, like she’s just a toy to him, just an object to manipulate. “I hate you so much.”

“Shh,” Riddle says, patting her on the cheek with a warm hand. Were his hands that warm before? She goes to snap at him, but to her horror finds he has stolen her voice again. In silence, he turns her arm over and banishes the ribbon with a flick of his wand. _Avada Kedavra,_ against all of Harry’s wishes, is still sitting there in black and white. He traces it, his face lighting up with something like awe.

“I always wondered who could be important enough to leave one of these on me,” he says conversationally. “And who I had left them on in return. Everyone is so very _cagey_ when it comes to these little words. I suppose it comes with wearing your heart on your sleeve.” Harry is filled with rage as Riddle strokes the skin, and turns over his own wrist. Another flick of Harry’s wand, and she is looking at her own handwriting, in all capitals: _LIAR._

“What a mark to leave on somebody, Harriet,” he says, clucking his tongue in disapproval, “I never really had a chance. Not when I was born with _liar_ on my wrist. Mrs Cole would never trust me after she saw that. Although,” he says, still caressing the _Avada Kedavra_ that Harry wishes she could blast off of her skin, “I did pay you back, didn’t I?”

Finally, finally, he releases her wrist, and Harry could cry in relief, but he’s already moving, inspecting her. “You’ll be quite the pretty one when you grow up,” he says, trailing his fingers down her cheek, smoothing out her hair, “yes, this suits me very well.”

 _You do not suit me well!_ Harry wants to scream, _I do not want you! I don’t want this!_

But he knows that, of course.

“You know, we’re rather similar, don’t you think?” The hard look in Harry’s eyes is enough to disabuse him of that notion, and he laughs again- but it is different to before. It sounds - it sounds like a laugh belonging to a human being. Not the laugh of a nightmare, a villain. “Just think about it. Both raised by filthy muggles we hated, both half-bloods, both parseltongues, both orphans. You were just made for me, darling.”

Harry closes her eyes so she doesn’t have to keep on looking at his face. She feels a stinging hex hit her face and her eyes open up again. “Did I say you could do that?” Tom says, “Hmm? Did I?”

“I don’t need your permission,” Harry snaps, her eyes widening as she realises that she’s overcome the silencing spell. Rather than being angry, Riddle claps his hands together in delight.

“And powerful too!” he crows before crouching down so that they’re nose to nose. “What a witch magic has made for me.”

Then, there are lips on Harry’s lips, and she realises after a moment that he is kissing her - Riddle- _Voldemort,_ is kissing her. If she’d had anything to eat that morning, she’d have vomited it back up. But she can’t move, just has to stand there, still, until he decides he’s done.

“I hate you,” Harry sobs, “I hate you so much.”

“And I believe you,” Riddle says softly, seeming to relish the horror and disgust and fear that Harry is sure are flickering across her face.

“Dumbledore will stop you,” she says without thinking.

His expression changes like a lightswitch from amusement to anger. “Dumbledore?” He laughs, like he did before, like he did on Halloween 1981 as he stood over her mother’s body. It is cruel, and Harry wants to disappear. “ _Dumbledore_ ,” he snarls, “isn’t here. He has been frightened away by the mere _memory_ of me. And soon… soon I will be so much more than a memory.”

Harry wants to defend Dumbledore, but her mind gets stuck. “More than a memory?” she gasps.

“Oh, had I not explained?” The look on Riddle’s face is nasty, plain and simple. “Every minute that ticks by is strengthening me, Harriet. Can’t you feel it?” And _yes_ , Harry thinks, _yes,_ she can feel it. The heat and power and life coming off of him in waves. But she won’t give him the satisfaction of saying so. Instead she looks up at him stone faced. Unperturbed, he carries on: “I’ll be alive again, Harry, more than just a half-shade, forgotten. Lord Voldemort will rise again, right here, and he will finish his ancestor’s noble work - once the girl is dead, a message will be sent-”

“Once who is dead?” Harry asks, her mind immediately flying to the obvious choice.

“You’re a bright girl,” Tom mocks, “you don’t need me to answer that question, _dearest.”_

“Ginny,” Harry gasps, and she can see her in her mind’s eye - hissing, terrified, pale, withdrawn. She’s eleven years old. She’s eleven years old, and she’s _dying_.

That is the thought that finally gives her the power to break free of the full-body bind curse, and she stumbles backwards. Tom seems less happy about her breaking out of this one, and shoot another at her - she dodges it before she even realises what’s happening. Wood’s practice sessions were finally doing some good. “Be a dear and stay still,” Tom says, lip curling. In response, Harry sets off at a sprint.

“Ginny!” She screams, listening for a response as she weaves through all the interlocking chambers, most of which are littered with skins that the basilisk has shed, and animal bones of varying sizes scattered on the floor. “ _Ginny!”_ There is no yell, no cry for help, no scream. It is silent save for Tom’s spells whenever he gets close enough to fire, their footfalls against the wet ground and Harry’s own heartbeat. “ _Ginny!”_ She cries again.

“She can’t _hear you,_ stupid girl,” Tom’s voice echoes around the chambers, and Harry can’t be sure exactly what direction he’s in, not when he sounds like he’s everywhere at once.

Harry runs round a final corner, and comes to an interconnecting room, with about twenty doors. Grinning, she dives for one randomly and makes sure to close the door behind her. She knows Tom has caught up when she hears his groan. And then the grin slips off her face as she hears his next words.

 _“Speak to me Slytherin,”_ he hisses, “ _greatest of the Hogwarts Four!”_ A grinding of stone. Harry’s heart is in her mouth as she scans, searches - it feels as if these chambers go on forever.

_Master?_

Oh, and Harry knows that voice. That voice has been following her around, sending her insane ever since she heard it for the first time.

_“Close your eyes. I need you to smell the girl out for me, but not to kill.”_

_Sooo hungry… so hungry, master…_

_“Soon,”_ there was annoyance in Riddle’s voice, “ _soon there will be a body for you to devour, you have my word. But for now, smell her out.”_

_Yesss massster..._

Another chamber, another door. Harry was starting to get stitch in her side, another snakeskin, a cow’s skeleton, a new room, a new dank, featureless chamber- _there!_

Ginny Weasley’s red hair was unmissable in the darkness. Harry sprinted towards her limp body, panic and relief battling inside her. She had found her - she had found her, but Riddle was coming, with the basilisk. And Ginny was in no position to move, she found, her skin waxy and cold as ice, her head lolling listlessly from side to side.

_Clossse now massster…_

Unsure what else to do, Harry gathers Ginny in her arms, rocks her side to side. “Wake up,” she whispers as loud as she dares, “wake up, wake up, please, Ginny! Ginny! Wake up, you need to wake up, he’s coming-”

Nothing. Harry looks around in desperation, and suddenly sees something she hadn’t before. Beneath where Ginny had been lying was a small, black book. A very familiar black book.

Harry’s hand closed around the diary as Riddle finally made it to the chamber, a huge serpent snaking along behind him, eyelids firmly shut. Harry hadn’t thought that snakes had eyelids, but this one certainly did. Most snakes didn’t kill with a glance either, so she could see why they had developed an evolutionary need for eyelids. Riddle’s face lights up when he sees her, as if they’re friends, as if he actually liked her. “Harriet!” He cries, a wide smile spread across his perfect face. “I see you found my guest!”

“Let her go,” Harry said hoarsely, “let her go _now_.”

Riddle frowned. “I don’t think I can do that, sorry Harriet.” he raised his wand, and Harry lifted the diary to head height. Riddle froze. He tried to cover it up, to relax, but it was then that Harry knew.

The diary. As long as Ginny lived, Riddle was bound to the diary. “What would you be wanting with an old thing like that?” Tom asked, voice strained, “It’s just a book now.”

Harry shook her head. “ _I don’t think so."_

But the words that came out - they weren’t words. Not in English, anyway. Beside Tom the basilisk raised it’s head at the parseltongue. _Another Speaker?_ The beast hissed.

“ _No-”_ Tom began.

“ _Y_ _es!”_ Harry said, baring her teeth at Tom, feeling a little like a wild animal, “ _Y_ _es, I am a Speaker.”_ She swallowed, and hoped all the extra reading she’d done that year was right. _“I can command you, because I Speak.”_

 _“No!”_ Tom bellowed, and for the first time Harry saw fear on his face. It was a heady feeling, to know she had done that. She had scared him.

 _Yes,_ the Basilisk told her, _all who Speak may command me._

 _"You obey me!”_ Tom hissed sharply.

 _I obey Speakers,_ the Basilisk said, _you are a Speaker and so is the hatchling girl. These are the orders Salazar left for me and mine._

 _“Basilisk,”_ Harry said, her mouth dry. It couldn’t be this easy, could it? _“Come here. Keep your eyes closed.”_

 _“DO NOT GO!”_ Tom shouted. The Basilisk paused, before moving across the room towards Harry. “ _NO! I am the heir of Slytherin, this girl is just my mate - she has no power of her own. She is just a woman.”_

The Basilisk continued forward. _Snakes treat their women with ressspect,_ the great snake said, _they lead the nest._

Riddle drew his wand, and fired a spell - it caused no damage on the Basilisk, but the colossal snake definitely noticed. _You dare, boy?_ The snake moved very, very fast, doubling back and rearing up. _You dare try to compel me? Me, Queen of the Serpents? I am Death, boy, I am Salazar’s Own, hatched from his own hands. You dare try to control me?_

_“My- my apologies, your majesty, I forgot-”_

_You shall never forget again._

For one beautiful moment, Harry thought she was about to witness the Basilisk eat Riddle. But then the snake turned back towards her, leaving the memory shaking in the corner. He’s terrified of death, Harry reasons. A Basilisk is death given animal form. _Now you,_ the creature said,  _what is it you would have me do, Speaker?_

Harry locks eyes with Riddle across the room. He looks very, very scared. _Please_ , his eyes beg her, _please_.

If Harry was a different girl, maybe she would have listened. But Harry was Harry - she was the Girl-Who-Lived, Voldemort’s soulmate, Ron and Hermione’s best friend, seeker for the Gryffindor team. She was the Dursley’s freak of a niece and Dobby’s saviour and now Ginny’s. And she did not choose Tom Riddle.

 _“Bite down into this book.”_ Harry orders without a flicker of regret, and places the diary in front of the Basilisk’s scaled snout.

Riddle lets out a roar of fury, and he runs forward, but it is too late - without hesitation the Basilisk has followed her orders. He stops halfway across the chamber, choking as a burst of light suddenly shoots out of his chest. “Harriet!” he screams, and he sounds like a little child for a moment, but Harry doesn’t look away, not even as the light is turning his face and robes and legs and arms all to ash. It echoes around the chamber: _Harriet! Harriet! Harriet!_

And then he’s gone. Harry’s wand clatters to the stone floor beside him.

Harry thinks she’s imagined the first movement Ginny makes, but then she does it again, shifts. “Oh thank god,” Harry says hoarsely as colour floods back into Ginny’s freckled cheeks, “thank god.”

 _Where did the other Speaker go?_ The Basilisk asks, apparently confused by Riddle’s disappearance.

 _“He died,”_ Harry said tiredly, _“I am the only Speaker now.”_

 _Very well,_ the Basilisk said after a moment, bowing its head to her. _W_ _hat do you wish of me, missstresss?_

Harry licked her lips, thought. “ _I_ _need you to guide me to the exit, great one. And then… then you need to go back into hibernation.”_

 _Of courssse,_ the Basilisk says, unquestioning. Picking up her wand, Harry resists the urge to kiss it, as it's covered in slime, and instead points it at Ginny - one Wingardium Leviosa later and they were off. Oh, Harry was filthy, exhausted, emotionally drained and traumatized, but she was alive. She was _alive_ \- and so was Ginny.

And right then, that was enough for her.

* * *

Of all the places Harry was expecting the entrance of the Chamber of Secrets to be, she would not have guessed it was Myrtle’s bathroom. Myrtle herself seemed rather surprised.

“You- out of the floor-”

Harry was very glad at that moment that the Basilisk had told her there was a way of activating stairs up to the castle. Her first idea, when met with the large, smooth tunnel, was for her to sit on the Basilisk’s head and for her to take them to the entrance. Myrtle had died, she realised sometime on the way up, because of the Basilisk and Tom Riddle once already. There was no need for her to withstand trauma like that twice.

“Hey Myrtle,” she said tiredly, before lying on the wet tiled floor, letting Ginny’s prone form do the same, “how are you doing?”

“THEY THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD!” Myrtle screeched, making Harry jump. “Yes, yes you better jump - _hey Myrtle,_ indeed! Running around like headless chickens, writing on the wall - _their skeletons will lie in the chamber forever,_ in blood this time, not paint! Blood, Harry! I thought it was yours! I was afraid to go, afraid to stay - I thought you might get stuck here like me, in the in between, that you’d have to share my toilet, that I’d have to tell those stupid friends of yours that you were dead on _my watch-”_ It wasn’t so much as unexpected that Myrtle was crying, but it seemed different this time. Less hysterical, more deep and wracking and hurt.

“Oh Myrtle,” Harry said, guilt flowing through her, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I worried you-”

“ _WORRIED ME?”_ The ghost girl screamed. Harry looked worriedly at Ginny, but the younger girl was dead to the world, regardless of the noise levels that Myrtle was reaching. “Worried me! Worried- I was not worried, you stupid, self centered girl! I was _frantic! Desperate!_ And you- you just climb out of some stupid hole underneath the sinks, in my bloody bathroom and say  _hey Myrtle._ I thought… I thought that… I _hurt, I hurt_ so bad I thought I was… I thought I was alive again just to die. I never had a friend.”

Oh, oh. Harry didn’t think she could feel anymore. She thought that Tom Riddle had stretched her to her limits, and she was going to be an emotionless husk for days. But this hurts, hurts in both a good way and a bad way, and she isn’t scared or angry. She is sorry. She is very, very sorry. “I never meant for this,” she says to Myrtle, and gropes for her hands - her silvery, incorporeal hands, but instead of pulling away when the ice and the cold comes, she stays. And after a moment, the cold still burns but it doesn’t worsen. Myrtle looks down at where their hands meet, tears coursing down her cheek. “But I am glad to be your friend. I am glad. Before- before Hogwarts, I’d never had a friend either. Hermione was my first, Ron my second. I would be honoured if you were my third. If you would be willing to be in their company-”

“Yes,” Myrtle says, and she glows for a moment, glows bright as any of the other house ghosts. “Yes, please. I would like that. I would like that a lot.”

Harry gives a watery smile, and Myrtle does too, and even though she is cold, horribly cold and wet and slimy and disgusting, and she remembers not too long ago when she had said the most terrible things to her in this bathroom. Myrtle, surprisingly, gathers herself first. “What is she doing with you?” She nods towards Ginny’s prone form.

“It’s a funny story,” she says, laughing thickly, “but for all our detective work it, er, it seems that Ginny was essentially the Heir of Slytherin.”

“ _What?_ ” Myrtle stared at Harry as if she had just told an incredibly bad joke. “ _Her?!”_

“It wasn’t really her,” Harry rushed to explain, “it was her diary, and the memory of the boy inside it. He was the one who opened the chamber fifty years ago. He… was the one who… who killed you.”

Myrtle stiffened. “He… no. That can’t be right. I just saw some big yellow eyes, they didn’t belong to a person-”

Harry wanted to take back her words, but Myrtle deserved to know. “That was a basilisk, Myrtle. It kills with just one look. He was the one controlling the basilisk.”

Myrtle nodded very fast, very jerkily. “Oh. Oh. Who- who was in the diary? No, wait, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. But- no, please, tell me. I have to know. I need to know. Was it - was it somebody awful like Olive Hornby’s brother?”

“His name was Tom Riddle.”

Myrtle bit her lip, and then buried her face in her hands. “Oh. Oh. I knew him. Knew of him. I didn’t- I never-”

“Nobody did,” Harry said, wanting desperately to be able to hold Myrtle, just the once. “I wanted you to know - he fooled everyone. He tricked people, that was what he did. But he’s gone now. He’s gone.”

“Good,” Myrtle said, “good.”

“Are you going to be okay?” Harry asked.

“Yeah,” Myrtle said, hovering higher in the air, her voice rising with the rest of her, “yes. I’m going to be alright. I just- you should be getting on. Quickly. Everyone’s worried. Skeletons, death, blood, it’s all very concerning. Off you pop.”

Harry looked doubtfully at Ginny’s unconscious body. “ _Wingardium Leviosa_ ,” she says with a wand wave. Nothing. Harry’s adrenaline appeared to have deserted her now that she was above ground level.

“I’ve got it,” Myrtle says with a sigh, and before Harry can say anything, she plunges one translucent hand into Ginny’s chest. The first year jerks upright with a screech of surprise at the sudden temperature drop. She looks around, mouth hanging open. Then she looks at Myrtle’s silvery form, then to Harry’s wide eyes.

“Harry!” The girl cried out, “I didn’t mean to! It was me, Harry - but I - I s-swear I d-didn't mean to - R-Riddle made me, w-where's Riddle? The last thing I r-remember is him coming out of the diary-”

“It’s okay,” Harry said, reaching out to steady Ginny as she started to tremble. “It’s okay, he’s gone. He’s gone. I destroyed the diary. It’s over.”

Ginny, after staring at her for a long time to establish she was telling the truth, burst into tears of relief and gratitude. “Thank you,” she kept on saying, “thank you, thank you so much, I didn’t know who to tell- when Ron was petrified- I was so afraid-”

“It’s over,” Harry had to keep on telling her as they staggered, arm in down the hallway. Harry is amazed at how deserted the halls are. She supposes that the students had been confined to their towers, like what happened after Ron and Hermione’s double petrification. But finally they do come upon someone - even if Harry would have preferred it to be literally any other teacher.

“...Potter? Weasley?” Snape face is a picture of surprise, and he gapes at both her and Ginny. And then he does something that Harry wouldn’t have thought him actually capable of before that moment: he breaks into a sprint. Harry can do nothing at blink as he properly runs towards them, his normally perfect cloak whipping behind him. He skids to a stop, and separates the two girls - he looks over Harry first, looks for any blood, any cuts or burns or rips in her robes frantically, his hands shaking and hot on her skin. When apparently satisfied, he moves onto Ginny, and whilst he doesn’t seem to find anything except a fairly high temperature, he frowns a lot. The familiar expression is actually quite comforting to Harry.

After he’s undertaken his inspections, he lets his head drop down for a moment, his greasy black hair forming curtains around his face, and lets out a deep, steadying breath. If Harry didn’t know any better, she’d say that he was relieved. But when Snape lifts his face up again, it is completely blank. He nods at them both, and draws his wand. “ _Expecto Patronum,"_ he said in a crisp voice, and a silvery animal - a doe - burst out of his wand. “Both girls are with me, and safe. I will escort them to your office now. To Minerva McGonagall, quickly.” The miniature creature sped off down the corridor, and out of sight. “Follow me,” Snape said in a clipped voice, and set off down the hall, keeping Harry and Ginny within his sights the whole time.

Harry was very happy to let an adult take charge at long last.

Despite the fact that Snape had spent a message ahead, it didn’t seem to have reached McGonagall long before they did. There was a scream from the other end of the hall, and a red blur that Harry managed to identify as Mrs Weasley shot down the corridor at a breakneck speed and threw herself at her daughter. “Ginny!” Hot on her heels was her husband, who looked like he had aged several decades since Harry had last seen him.

Harry watched them fussing and crying over Ginny with a detached fondness. It felt like something completely alien to her; like something she wasn’t supposed to be looking in on. Snape seemed to understand, and beckoned her into the office, where McGonagall was standing upright at her desk, taking deep, gulping breaths, looking at Harry as she entered like she’d seen a ghost, and at the mantelpiece stood Dumbledore, looking as if he’d just been standing there ever since his dismissal, beaming at Harry.

Behind her, Mrs Weasley ran back into the room, and leapt upon Harry with little warning. “You saved her!” Harry realised she was crying after a moment, sobbing into Harry’s hair, “You saved her! How did you do it? You saved my baby!”

Harry awkwardly patted the older woman’s back.

“I too,” McGonagall said, after having finally got a grip on herself, “would like to know how exactly you did it.”

Mrs Weasley released Harry for long enough for her to place the battered, purged diary on McGonagall’s desk. Dumbledore stared at it for a long moment, looking haunted. “Do you know what this is, sir?” She asked before she could stop herself.

“I fear I do, Miss Potter,” the headmaster said, looking very, very old. “Can you tell us with certainty?”

Harry nodded, and before she could second guess herself, she launched into her story. She didn’t tell them everything - she didn’t tell them about the spell on her wrist, the way that Tom Riddle broke into her mind and laid her past out bare. But she told them about the voice she kept on hearing in the walls, finding Mrs Norris before anybody else, spending all those months tracking down and eliminating suspects one by one to no effect, Hermione’s realisation about the pipes, the boy in the diary, finding the book itself in Ginny’s things, Tom Riddle’s anagram, the endless chambers below the school…

By the time she reached the destruction of the diary, her throat is beginning to go sore. “You… commanded the basilisk?” McGonagall said faintly.

Harry swallowed. “Well… yes. She was ordered by Slytherin to follow the bidding of his heirs, who she would know if they could speak parseltongue. Although I’m not a descendant of Slytherin, as far as I know, I can speak parseltongue, so she was bound to do what I said. Like- like Voldemort, but before he’d never had another speaker to contend with. And when he tried to compel her-” Harry shivered at the memory of the Basilisk’s fury.

“She bit down and he just… exploded. And then Ginny started moving. And the Basilisk - I asked her the way out, because I was lost, and then I told her to go back into hibernation and… I came out in Moaning Myrtle’s toilet, and then ran into Professor Snape. You know the rest.”

“The Basilisk is still alive?” Snape echoed, and Harry nodded her head.

“I don’t think it would have obeyed an order to kill itself, and I wasn’t in any position to do anything-”

“No-” Snape said, “that is not what I- where is this chamber again? The girl’s toilets?” He turned to Dumbledore, looking incredibly severe. “I suggest we call in the Aurors, conjure a few roosters and go down there immediately to end the beast. Would you be able to open the chamber again, Miss Potter?”

Every eye was on Harry. “I- um, I could try? I don’t actually remember going down so much as coming out.”

“We don’t need to talk about this now,” Professor McGonagall ruled, giving Snape a stern look, before turning that same look on Harry. “Miss Potter, I cannot tell you enough just how foolhardy, reckless and stupid you were to crusade against the heir without so much as informing a teacher of your suspicions, especially after Miss Granger and Mr Weasley were attacked. I cannot think of many grown wizards who have survived a confrontation with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, let alone twelve year old girls. But… I do not believe that young Miss Weasley would be alive if you hadn’t done what you did. No one else could have commanded the Basilisk, that’s for certain.”

“Hear, hear,” Dumbledore said gently, his eyes twinkling again. “But what interests me the most about this whole affair is how exactly did Lord Voldemort possess Ginny when by all accounts he is currently hiding out somewhere in Albania?”

The word ‘possess’ had not actually been used yet, Harry skirting around it, but she had told them word for word what Riddle had said, and there was little to be misunderstood. Still, Mrs Weasley let out a sob and buried her face in her daughter’s hair. Ginny herself still had tears spilling silently down her cheeks.

“It was the diary,” Harry said, “like I told you before, when the Basilisk pierced it with her fangs, he disappeared. Somehow - through the diary he wrote in when he was at Hogwarts - he was possessing her, stealing her life force…” Harry’s voice dwindled away at the stricken look on Mr Weasley’s face.

Dumbledore picked up the diary, turned it over one way and another to inspect the huge gash in the middle of the cover. “Brilliant,” he said softly, “Of course, he was probably the most brilliant student Hogwarts has ever seen.” He looked up at the confused faces of McGonagall, Snape, Harry and the Weasleys.

“Very few people know that Lord Voldemort was once called Tom Riddle. I taught him myself, fifty years ago, at Hogwarts. He disappeared after leaving the school... traveled far and wide... sank so deeply into the Dark Arts, consorted with the very worst of our kind, underwent so many dangerous, magical transformations, that when he resurfaced as Lord Voldemort, he was barely recognizable. Hardly anyone connected Lord Voldemort with the clever, handsome boy who was once Head Boy here. He could be very charming indeed, as I fear our young friend here found out.” He said, nodding towards Ginny.

Harry bit her tongue. _Not even me,_ she wanted to say, to stop Ginny crying, _not even his soulmate._ But there were some secrets that Harry refused to share with anyone except Ron and Hermione.

Mr Weasley seemed almost lost for words before they spilled out of him in a muddle. “Haven’t I- didn’t I always tell you- didn’t you know never to trust anything that can think for itself if you can’t see where it keeps it’s brain? I always, always told you- you should have brought it to me or your mother at once- a suspicious object like that- clearly full of dark magic!”

Ginny was crying even harder now, but her mother was supporting her, not letting her fall. “I d-didn’t kn-o-ow!” she sobbed incoherently, “I found it inside one of the books Mum got me. I th-thought someone had just left it in there and forgotten about it-"

"Miss Weasley should go up to the hospital wing right away," Dumbledore interrupted in a firm voice, smiling kindly at the first year. "This has been a terrible ordeal for her. There will be no punishment. Older and wiser wizards than she have been hoodwinked by Lord Voldemort.” He strode over to the door and opened it. “Bed rest and perhaps a large, steaming mug of hot chocolate. I always find that cheers me up," he added, twinkling kindly down at her. "You will find that Madam Pomfrey is still awake. She's just giving out the Mandrake juice - I daresay the basilisk's victims will be waking up any moment."

Despite herself, Harry felt herself brighten at that. Ron and Hermione would be waking up soon, and she wanted nothing more than to see them again.

At Dumbledore’s words, Ginny broke into a fresh flood of tears, perhaps in relief at the lack of punishment, or the guilt of remembering the victims of the Basilisk. Mrs Weasley gratefully steered her sobbing child out of the room. Mr Weasley stayed behind for a moment, looking utterly ashen, before he suddenly grasped Harry’s hand, gave it a firm shake, and strode out of the office after his wife and daughter.

Next, the elderly wizard turned to Snape and McGonagall. “Minerva, I think that all this excitement merits a good feast. Could you please organise it? Oh, and Severus - if you could make your way swiftly to the Ministry and collect Aurors and some roosters to deal with the Basilisk once and for all.” Both staff members nodded and swept out the room, until it was just Harry and Dumbledore.

“You did a very brave thing, Harry,” Dumbledore said gravely, massaging his temples, “I never dreamed that Voldemort would dare to return here in any form. I see now that my hubris almost cost Miss Weasley, yourself and every muggleborn in the school their lives.”

“Sir,” Harry said immediately, “it’s not your fault! Nobody found the chamber - and you knew it wasn’t Hagrid, you saved him!”

Dumbledore says nothing, waves away Harry’s words. “But you are child, Harry. If not in mind, then in body. It should not have fallen to you to investigate the Heir or the Chamber. It should not have been a burden you had to shoulder. And I am sorry, from the bottom of my heart. I am sorry you had to face Tom Riddle alone. Again.”

Harry felt like he wasn’t just apologising for the whole mess of the Chamber. She had a feeling that he was apologising for a lot more than that.

“It’s okay,” Harry said awkwardly, “I’m fine.”

“I’m glad,” Dumbledore said softly, and smiled at her. As stupid as it sounded, it filled Harry up with warmth and pride. “Still - I think that 200 points to Gryffindor will help things along, as will an award for Special Services to the School-”

“Oh no, sir,” Harry said suddenly, “not one of those. I don’t want it. Not if _he’s-_ ” She closes her mouth, afraid she’s said too much.

“Just the points then,” Dumbledore says immediately, unflappable. “And be assured, Tom Riddle’s trophy will be removed.”

Harry sighs in relief. “Thanks.”

“There is a certain irony in it,” Dumbledore said after a moment of them sitting in comfortable silence, “that by using Voldemort’s own gift of Parseltongue, you managed to turn the Basilisk against Slytherin’s heir.”

Harry froze. “How- what- _Voldemort’s own_?”

He knew. He had to know. Why else would he say such a thing? It could have been a dormant gift, that’s what most people assumed after the Duelling Club incident and everyone had had time to calm. But Dumbledore sounded so sure- so _sure-_ he had to know, he had to have seen the words on Harry’s wrist somehow-

Oblivious to her internal panic, Dumbledore nodded. “I am afraid so. It is my belief Harry that the reason you can speak Parseltongue is because Lord Voldemort - who is the last remaining ancestor of Salazar Slytherin - can speak Parseltongue. Unless I'm much mistaken, he transferred some of his own powers to you the night he gave you that scar. Not something he intended to do, I'm sure..."

Harry knew she should be scared, surprised, but all she could feel at that moment was overwhelming relief that Dumbledore didn’t know about her soulbond with the Dark Lord. _It’s so unlikely,_ she told herself, _that he found another way for it to happen. But_ I _know the truth._

“Oh,” she says a little underwhelmingly if Dumbledore’s searching blue gaze is anything to go by. “I can’t believe it.” She never was a particularly good liar.

“It’s very obscure magic, Harry,” Dumbledore said in what was probably an effort to be comforting, “I wouldn’t expect you to know anything of it. But I mean to reassure you, Harry - you are completely different to Tom Riddle. Whilst, it is true, there are similarities between your upbringings, and you share some abilities, there is one very important thing you must keep in mind that sets you on very different roads - you choose your own path. You have always had a choice. And I cannot see you ever choosing the same path as Voldemort.”

Harry’s throat is thick for a moment, and she can barely speak. “Thank you, professor,” she murmurs, and she wonders if her eyes are as bright as Dumbledore’s for a moment as they hold unshed tears.

“Now,” Dumbledore announces, effectively breaking the moment, “we both have a lot we must do. Your first priority is to have something to eat, and to have a sleep. I, on the other hand, must write to Azkaban in order to get our gamekeeper back.” Harry beamed at the thought of Hagrid’s return. “And I must draft an advertisement for the Daily Prophet, too," he added thoughtfully. "We'll be needing a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher…”

“Huh?” Harry asked, “What happened to Lockhart?”

“It turns out, Harry,” Professor Dumbledore said gravely, but his eyes were twinkling still, “that when confronted with real danger in the face of a Basilisk, our very own Professor Lockhart turned tail and ran, in the middle of the night no less. I think in this light his books must be re-examined… as works of fiction. Dear me, Harry, can you imagine him a fraud?”

Harry couldn’t hold in her giggle at the thought of Lockhart’s much beloved celebrity standing being torn apart in the very same tabloids that he was the darling of. “Yes,” she managed, “yes, I really can.”

Feeling much lighter than she had in weeks, Harry rose and crossed the room to the door. She was about to pull on the handle when the knob turned and it opened from the other side so violently that it banged against the wall. Lucius Malfoy stood in the doorway, fury in his face. And cowering behind his legs, heavily wrapped in bandages, was Dobby.

Harry’s good mood was gone in an instant.

"Good evening, Lucius," said Dumbledore pleasantly.

Mr. Malfoy almost knocked Harry over as he swept into the room. Dobby went scurrying in after him, crouching at the hem of his cloak, a look of abject terror on his face. Harry gut curdled something awful.

The little elf was carrying a stained rag with which he was attempting to finish cleaning Mr. Malfoy’s shoes. Apparently Mr. Malfoy had set out in a great hurry, for not only were his shoes half-polished, but his usually sleek hair was disheveled. Harry tried to catch the house elf’s eye, but couldn’t. Ignoring the elf bobbing apologetically around his ankles, he fixed his cold eyes upon Dumbledore.

"So!" he said "You've come back! The governors suspended you, but you still saw fit to return to Hogwarts."

"Well, you see, Lucius," said Dumbledore, smiling serenely, "the other eleven governors contacted me today. It was something like being caught in a hailstorm of owls, actually. A rather unpleasant phenomena all in all. They'd heard that Harriet Potter and Arthur Weasley’s daughter had both been killed and wanted me back here at once. They seemed to think I was the best man for the job after all. Very strange tales they told me, too... several of them seemed to think that you had threatened to curse their families if they didn't agree to suspend me in the first place."

Mr. Malfoy went even paler than usual, but his eyes were still slits of fury. "So - have you stopped the attacks yet?" he sneered. "Have you caught the culprit?"

“We have,” Dumbledore said serenely.

Malfoy had not been expecting that answer. He started, but quickly regained control over himself. But there was something else in his eyes now, something other than anger - fear.

"Well?" said Mr. Malfoy sharply, a tremor shaking his voice. "Who is it?"

"The same person as last time, Lucius," said Dumbledore. "But this time, Lord Voldemort was acting through somebody else. By means of this diary." He held up the small black book with the large hole through the center, watching Mr. Malfoy closely.

Harry, however, was watching Dobby, as she’d finally managed to lock gazes with the little elf.

The elf was doing something very odd. His great eyes fixed meaningfully on Harry, he kept pointing at the diary, then at Mr. Malfoy, and then hitting himself hard on the head with his fist. It took Harry a moment, and then she got it. She could have hit herself over the head then for her own stupidity. She nodded at Dobby, and he fell back, twisting his ears as he did so.

_“Take your book, girl - it’s the best your father can give you-”_

"I see..." said Mr. Malfoy slowly to Dumbledore as Harry’s mind raced.

"A clever plan," said Dumbledore in a level voice, with a hint of something sharp on the edges, still staring Mr. Malfoy straight in the eye. "Because if Harriet here -" Mr. Malfoy shot Harry a swift, sharp look "hadn't discovered this book, why - Ginny Weasley might have taken all the blame. No one would ever have been able to _prove_ she hadn't acted of her own free will..."

Mr. Malfoy said nothing. His face was suddenly masklike.

"And imagine," Dumbledore went on, "what might have happened then... The Weasleys are one of Britain’s most prominent pureblood families. Imagine the effect on Arthur Weasley and his Muggle Protection Act, if his own daughter was discovered attacking and - killing Muggle-borns... Very fortunate the diary was discovered, and Riddle's memories wiped from it. Who knows what the consequences might have been otherwise..."

_Dad and Mr Malfoy, they have a feud…_

"Very fortunate," Malfoy said stiffly, forcing himself to speak as Dumbledore looked at him knowingly.

“Don’t you want to know how Ginny got that diary, Mr Malfoy?” Harry said suddenly, feeling incredibly brave and strong as she realised that Dumbledore couldn’t accuse Malfoy of anything. But she could.

Malfoy rounded on him, his face twisted in ugliness. “How should I know how the stupid girl got a hold of it?”

“You should know,” Harry said, not blinking, “because you gave it to her.” Something flashed in Malfoy’s grey eyes. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides.

“Prove it,” Malfoy snarled, his lip pulled back against his teeth.

"Oh, no one will be able to do that," said Dumbledore, smiling at Harry as he cut in effortlessly. "Not now that Riddle has vanished from the book. On the other hand, I would advise you, Lucius, not to go giving out any more of Lord Voldemort's old school things. If any more of them find their way into innocent hands, I think Arthur Weasley, for one, will make sure they are traced back to you..."

 _And me,_ Harry thought, _I would make sure it came back to you too._

Malfoy was the colour of winter snow by the end of Dumbledore’s speech. He turned to the cowering figure on the floor. “Come, Dobby!” He snapped before he made for the door. Harry’s heart ached, as she saw Malfoy stride out of the room, the little elf, bandaged and bruised, forced to follow, and when he was too slow his master kicked him hard with his still half-shined shoes.

Bile crept up in Harry’s throat. She could hear Dobby squealing with pain all the way along the corridor. She reached over, and snapped up the diary before sprinting out the door, Dumbledore watching her sedately as she did so.

Malfoy and Dobby were out of sight, and she hopped as she pulled one slimy, crusty sock off her foot and stuffed it in between the pages of the diary. Following the receding sound of Dobby’s squeals, Harry caught up to them after a few moments. “Mr Malfoy!” She cried, “Mr Malfoy! I have something of yours!”

She thrust the diary at him, and his face spasmed at the smell of the slimy sock. Disgusted, he threw it and the diary to the side, before looking furiously at Harry. "You'll meet the same sticky end as your parents one of these days, Harriet Potter," he said softly. "They were meddlesome fools, too."

Harry simply grinned at him in reply, and the older wizard rolled his eyes, before turning to walk away. “Come, Dobby. I said _come,_ Dobby.”

But Dobby didn't move. He was holding up Harry's disgusting, slimy sock, and looking at it as though it were a priceless treasure, and beatific smile lit up on his tiny face. "Master has given a sock," said the elf in wonderment. "Master gave it to Dobby."

"What's that?" spat Mr. Malfoy. "What did you say?"

"Got a sock," said Dobby in disbelief. "Master threw it, and Dobby caught it, and Dobby - Dobby is free."

Lucius Malfoy stood frozen, staring at the elf and the sock.

Then he lunged at Harry. For what had to have been the fifth time that year, Oliver’s extra quidditch training sessions came into their own, and Harry was able to dodge out of the way. “You lost me my servant, stupid girl!” Malfoy roared, red with rage, and Harry thought for a second he was going to kill her, finish what his master started.

“You shall not harm Harriet Potter!” Dobby exclaimed suddenly, in that high pitched voice, standing between Harry and his former master. He clicked his fingers, and Harry heard no spell, but Malfoy was thrown back by a strong invisible force all the way to the other end of the corridor and halfway down the stairs. He staggered to his feet, and his wand was in his hand, but Dobby stood firm. “You shall go now,” he demanded, “You shall go now. You shall not harm Harriet Potter.”

And miraculously, wondrously, after a long pause, Malfoy _did_.

Harry panted, and grinned at Dobby as the little elf turned around and ran into her arms. “Harriet Potter miss!” He cried, blubbing, “Dobby is free! Dobby is a free elf! Harriet Potter set Dobby free!”

“Of course,” Harry said, squeezing his little body to her chest, “of course I did. Oh Dobby, that terrible man… I would have duelled him for you if I had to. I wouldn’t have let you stay there a day more.”

“Harriet Potter,” Dobby whimpered, and then didn’t say anything else for a very long time.

**Author's Note:**

> You know the drill - please leave kudos and a comment, I love to hear your feedback!
> 
> Find me on tumblr at: [mayfriend](http://mayfriend.tumblr.com)


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